Heartbeat
by varietyofwords
Summary: Linstead plus Voight, Natalie, and Will. Future fic. "Jay cracks a small smile in the hopes that it combined with his comment will make her laugh, but Erin just shakes her head against his palm and reminds him that she's not his fiancee. Not anymore."
1. Part One

**Author's Note:** I know I'm behind on 'Addendum' updates, but please don't hate me for starting a new fic. I've had this idea in my head since before 3x10 aired, and it's been crowding out all the other ideas I have for 'Addendum' and other Linstead fics. The plan is for this to be a short, multi-chapter fic covering a twenty-four hour period and varying in points of view. Please let me know your thoughts!

* * *

 _Can you feel my heartbeat?  
Pounding into nothing.  
Broken bones are floating in my empty body.  
Can you feel it reaching?  
Moving through the feeling.  
Won't you bring me down?_

\- "Heartbeat" by VÉRITÉ

The splash of water pulls his attention from the iPhone in his hand. His thumb stops slide upward against the screen; the headlines of the Trib ceases scrolling across the display. And Jay twists his head so his gaze moves from the phone to the mirror about the sink visible through the partially opened bathroom door at his left. Reflected in the mirror is a flash of shaky, pale limbs struggle to hold up her weight, and he watches his face fall in the mirror as her limbs give out. Shoves his phone into the front pocket of his jeans at the second splash of water.

"Erin," Jay calls out as he pushes open the door and steps into the small bathroom. Her head twists towards him, and her eyes brighten with fiery anger. She can do this herself. He's not supposed to hover. All arguments they've had so frequently that he can guess what she's going to say before she can say it, before she can press her hands against the edge of the tub and try again.

And when her hands slip against the edge of the tub, when she struggles to lift her own weight, he steps in before she has to ask. Before she has to swallow her pride and ask for help; before her anger can be twisted around and directed at herself.

Jay plunges his arm into the hot water in order to curl his right hand under her knees, and his left hand skims across her back as he tries to find a good place to grip. His fingers curl around her ribcage as he carefully tries to avoid the scar, the red line running from her right armpit to midway across her chest. It stops only a few centimeters from her left breast, from the singular reminder of what used to be on both sides.

Yet Jay is careful to train his gaze somewhere else. Focuses on the way her bald head lulls against his chest as he lifts her out of the bathtub; focuses on snagging a clean towel off the rack so she doesn't freeze in short walk from bathroom to bedroom. And Erin does what she always does when this happens - winces and flinches as she finds the strength to pull the towel over the parts she doesn't want him or her or anyone else in this world to see. Over the scar across her chest, over the chemo port buried under her skin near the base of her left collarbone, and over the belly that has concaved inward from persistent nausea and lack of appetite.

He can tell her wrists are bothering her because her grip on the towel is looser tonight, because she doesn't bother to clutch onto the now dampened fabric of his Henley. He thinks she left her wrist guards - the ones Nat said were good for alleviating carpal tunnel syndrome - downstairs on the couch, but that isn't the item he offers to fetch for her as he pushes open the door to her childhood bedroom with his foot.

"No," she replies with determination seeping back in her voice. He steps over the pile of dirty clothes on the floor, moves around the suitcase no one bothered to unpack when they moved in here. What was supposed to be a temporary move - a bridge between his furlough ending and Erin getting some of her strength back - turned into something more long term as money and time grew tighter. And now unpacking that suitcase feels like admitting that this is more permanent than they planned and, besides, the task has fallen to the bottom on their to-do list.

"You haven't taken anything for days," Jay reminds her as he carefully sets Erin down on the unmade bed. He hates to push the pills on her, to be the guy in her life urging her to pop percocets like candy, but it's also so hard to see her like this. To watch her wince in pain when she presses her hand into the mattress in order to steady herself; to feel her shaking beside him in this tiny, twin bed at night because she hurts so badly.

"No," she repeats. The fire in her eyes returns as she lifts her gaze upward to look at him, as she grits her teeth and arranges the towel around her body. They've had this argument before, too. The one where her single answer tells him what she's afraid of - that if she starts taking the pills, she won't be able to stop - and his pushing makes her make comparisons to her past that she'll later rather tearfully regret.

And so Jay backs off the topic with a sigh as the fingers of his right hand rise to rub against his forehead, as his gaze shifts from Erin to the pile of clean clothes stacked on the dresser. He doesn't recall doing laundry recently, and the relatively small size of the stack tells him exactly who washed those clothes.

Hank made his rules about laundry pretty clear when they moved in here - that Erin's clothes have been included in the family laundry pile since she was fourteen but Jay is responsible for washing his own skives. Fair enough. Jay doesn't much like the idea of Hank touching his things anyways, and living in this house where Hank doesn't like shoes by the front door or pans drying on the stove or car keys left on the counter is trying enough.

The pile of laundry partially obscures the stack of non-narcotic medicines - the anti-nausea patches that don't help, the cough drops that help keep Erin's throat moist like the popsicles she's given at chemo, the cream to help alleviate scarring - from Jay's view, and it takes Jay a minute to locate it after he strides across the room towards the dresser. When he finds the cream, he holds it against his chest with his chin freeing up his hands to sort through the laundry.

Sure enough, only Erin's t-shirts and pajamas and workout pants made it through the wash, and Jay grabs a pair of black leggings and a loose fitting t-shirt from the pile for her. Drapes them over her shoulder and then works on locating a clean pair of underwear from the suitcase on the floor. Picks his black hoodie up off the floor for her because it's basically become hers anyways these days. Her own hoodie pinches the scar under her armpit; her own hoodie has to be removed when the nurses need access to her chemo port.

The droop of Erin's towel when he walks back over to her is a non-verbal request for help and confirmation of just how much pain her wrists are hurting her. It's one of the more silent side effects of chemo and radiation. One he saw his mother struggle with during her own battle with cancer as she still tried to play the role of Susie Homemaker for his dad.

And so Jay drops the clothes on the bed beside Erin and sinks to his knees in front of her. Unscrews the cap on the cream, squirts a generous amount on the fingers of his right hand, and then looks up to her as he sets the cream down on the floor beside him. Her gaze is fixated away from him on the window that rattles every single night because of the wind and even though he knows it has nothing to do with him, it still hurts when she flinches as he peels back the towel exposing the scar to his gaze.

The skin surgically pinched together feels foreign and rough under his fingertips as he gently rubs in the cream. Erin's surgeon, her oncologist, and Nat were all adamant that this would help, and Jay will admit that the color has faded from the angry purplish red he caught a single glimpse of in Erin's hospital room when the doctor came in to change her bandages to more a muted red. To the kind of color that tells him this part of her is healing even as the doctors pump poison into her body.

Erin could lose both breasts, and he would still love her. Erin could lose every limb or change her entire appearance, and Jay would still love her. Because Jay loves Erin for more than just her body, and he told her that when finally stopped icing him out and told him about her diagnosis. Repeated it over and over again when the doctors advised holding off on reconstructive surgery until after she finished chemo and radiation, when he first got a glimpse of her newly lopsided figure.

But it is still hard to see the scar, to touch it with his fingers and not remember the silky skin that used to be there. To feel the beating of her heart under his fingertips as he rubs in the cream and wonder why him, why this had to happen to his girl after cancer already took his mom. It's a selfish thought that he hates himself for every time it pops into his mind, and Jay is so caught up in beating himself up for this thought that he nearly misses the low, gravelly words Erin is whispering out.

"You should go."

"I've got some time until my shift," Jay reminds her as he glances over towards the alarm clock on the nightstand. He's got about forty minutes before he needs to leave for Med, which isn't enough time to do a load of laundry, but plenty of time to help Erin out with getting dressed and locating those damn wrist guards. And he'll make sure to clean up the mess downstairs before he leaves. Jay refuses to leave that mess - the dirty dishes on the table, the vomit on the floor - for Hank to find when he gets home. He doesn't want to piss off his sergeant after Hank let him leave work early today, after Hank's turned a blind eye to Jay picking up side jobs and pulling doubles.

"You should go," Erin repeats again, and the tone of her voice causes Jay's hand to still against her chest. Half the cream is rubbed in; the other half is still in globs along the line of her scar. His eyes sweep up to look at her, to see the red rimming around her eyes and the way she hollows out her cheeks to stop from crying.

"Erin," Jay replies with a sigh because he knows she isn't worried about him being late, knows she's giving him permission for something he never wants to do.

"I can't give you-"

"Stop," Jay interrupts. They've had this argument so many times in the past, and he's so sick of hearing all the bullshit reasons why she's not enough. If the reconstructive surgery never happens and she's left with this scar, then so be it. She's still the most beautiful, selfless, amazing person he knows. If the chemo and the radiation saves her life but kills their chances of having kids, then so be it. He wasn't sure he ever wanted kids to begin with.

"You deserve bet-"

"Hey," Jay interrupts again, and this time he moves his left hand to her jaw. Holds her chin in the space between his thumb and his index finger and forces her to look him in the eyes. Tears are welling in her eyes, and he rubs his thumb against her jawline as she tries to blink them back, as she falls back into the old habit of trying to hid her pain from those that love her. "I don't deserve anything, but what I want is to spend time with my fiancee before her dad gets home and finds us alone in her bedroom."

Jay cracks a small smile in the hopes that it combined with his comment will make her laugh, but Erin just shakes her head against his palm and reminds him that she's not his fiancee. Not anymore. And his face falls at the memory of her showing up at his half-packed apartment late one night and shoving the ring into his hand, at getting into a screaming match a few weeks later when he finds out the real reason why she ended it. Of pushing the ring in her hand again and telling her that she can end things if she truly doesn't love him, but she doesn't get to make decisions about what he wants or what he deserves.

And what he wants is to be with Erin so while the status of their relationship has remained in limbo, his presence in her life has not. He was there during the mastectomy; sat in silence in the waiting room next to Voight and tried not to think about the last time he was in a hospital waiting for someone he loves to have a tumor removed. He's was there through the recovery process at the hospital and then at the apartment when she'd pass out and hit her head, and he's sat through more chemo appointments - first with his mom and now with Erin - than one man should in a lifetime. He's held her when she's cried from pain, and he's cried alone in the basement of Hank's house when seeing her hurting so much gets to him.

He's been through Erin telling him to go and Voight telling him to go and his own brother asking him if he's prepared for what Erin's cancer will mean for his future. He's picked up patrol shifts and a second job working security at Med because Erin's on FMLA and the bills have started stacking up already. Because, as he told Hank, Erin's his fiancee whether she wears the damn ring or not and he's gonna help pay for the extra night at the hospital and the physical therapy and the experimental drugs that insurance doesn't cover. Because he loves her. End of discussion.

He tells her exactly that, watches the protest die on her lips at the finality of his voice because she's probably just as tried of this argument as he is. Because she probably knows after nearly five years of dating and seven years of being partners that there are something he's never gonna budge on. Would still be here even if she did say she no longer loves him because she's his partner and his friend and he's never gonna stop caring about her.

"You want help gettin' dressed?" Jay asks after a moment's pause, and Erin allows the placement of her hands against his shoulders to be her answer. Steps her feet into the underwear and the black workout pants he arranges on the floor for her; presses her hands against his shoulders to steady herself when it comes time for her to stand so he can pull her pants up. And despite her fears, despite the argument she tried to start again, even Erin smiles when Jay presses a kiss against her lumpy, bald head when it pops through the hole of her t-shirt as he helps her slide it on.

"I'm gonna take a nap," she informs him after he's helped her pull on the hoodie. Her hands are cradled against her chest now, and Jay cannot suppress the worry that flickers across his face at the sight. If chemo destroys her wrists, if it leaves her unable to hold her gun let alone take down a prep then -

Jay forces himself to push aside the thoughts of a future and focus on the now, focus on the way Erin awkwardly shimmies up the bed towards the pillows because it hurts too much to use her wrists. And he tugs gently on her pinkie toe when she lays down and buries her face into the pillow. Smiles at the way she kicks him and playfully tells him to leave her alone just like she'd do on the mornings he'd tried to walk her up and get her to go running with him.

And the smile doesn't leave his face as he picks up some of the mess - she can at least try to keep her mess contained when she isn't at her apartment - and returns the cream and her other meds where they belong. Nor does it fall when he moves from the bedroom shutting the door behind him to the bedroom where he drains the tub and wipes up the puddles on the floor.

The smile quickly disappears, though, when he heads downstairs and finds Voight on his hands and knees in the kitchen using paper towels to mop up the vomit. He didn't hear his sarge arrive home - a fact that frightens him given the frequency at which is occurs - and the look Voight shoots him is enough to make Jay pause in the doorway of the kitchen.

"Lasagna's no good?" Hank gruffly asks shift his gaze from Jay to the mess of the paper towels to the dinner plates at the kitchen table. For a couple weeks now, lasagna's been the only thing that Erin can stomach, and word about that fact got around the district and the church Jay grew up in. There are homemade lasagnas in the fridge, the freezer, and the chest freezer downstairs in the basement. But Erin had taken six bites of the one Jay heated up for dinner tonight and then promptly thrown up on the floor and on the hands she raised to try and stop it.

"No," Jay replies, although the answer is pretty obvious, and Hank merely grunts in acknowledgement. Adds some words about finding Erin something to eat later as he moves to his feet, as he tosses the used paper towels into the small, white trashcan under the kitchen sink while Jay informs him that Erin's upstairs taking a nap.

"She take anything?"

"No," Jay repeats, and he can see the disapproving lock of Hank's jaw, the press of his tongue against his cheek as he takes in this information. He and Hank have both been here before - seen their loved one wracked with pain from the cancer and the chem and seen Erin stumble over pills - and they both share the frustration of knowing they can't be yet another guy in Erin's life encouraging her to pop pills.

"Rest of the day?" Hank questions they work on cleaning up the kitchen - Jay washing the dishes, Hank using Lysol or some other extra strength cleaner on the floor - and Jay gives him the standard report about the afternoon. How Burgess said Erin slept all morning; how Erin grumbled about not needing a babysitter because she hasn't passed out in weeks. How the doctor said Erin's chemo port was still usable so they could probably push off surgery for a couple more weeks; how chemo has, obviously, made her sick but she seems to be doing fine.

That last piece of his report causes Hank's lips to purse together, and his hard gaze shifts from the floor to the ceiling as though he can see right into Erin's room above. And Jay is glad his back is to Voight as he tries and fails to sidestep Voight's question about Erin telling him to leave again because he doesn't want to see the look on Voight's face and he's tired of masking his own.

"You should go," Hank replies after a long pause in which he's moved to his feet, and Jay very nearly slams the plate down onto the sink as his anger pitches over Voight repeating Erin's direction from early.

"I told you, I'm not-" Jay starts turning around to face the father of his fiancee or his girlfriend or whatever the hell label Erin will let him use. But Voight cuts him off with narrowed eyes and a nod towards the clock on the stove. Jay's got less than ten minutes to get over to Med, to change in his security uniform and trade for a non-infectious disease floor with the other guards on duty.

And so Jay nods, wipes his hands off on the towel hanging from the oven door, and reaches for the keys and the wallet he left on the counter when he and Erin got to Voight's house this afternoon. Starts to move past Voight, but pauses when Hank twists his steely gaze towards him.

"You're a good guy, Halstead."

The compliment is unsettling and surprising, but Jay is at least grateful that Hank doesn't reach out to hug him or squeeze his shoulder as he has in the past. It's weird enough pseudo-living in the man's house. Odder still to have his boss featured so prominently in his personal life even after all these years. And all Jay can muster is a small nod of acknowledgement because it's always made him uncomfortable when people praise him for sticking by Erin's side. Because despite how radically different this life is from the one he thought they'd have when he proposed, despite how many bad memories this is dragging up for him, there's nowhere else he wants to be than with his girl.


	2. Part Two

With a heavy sigh, she falls backwards into the empty chair. Her whole body is strumming with anger, and her mind is racing with all the possible comebacks she could have – _should have_ – thrown back in his face. The pharmaceutical suggestions that could help; the fact that the case falls inside the realm of her specialization rather than his. And that heavy sigh becomes a groan as she stretches out in the chair – feet pointing and flexing as they are reprieved of her weight – and settles on the perfect response.

"Will driving you crazy?" Maggie asks without looking up from the computer screen, and Natalie turns her head against the back of the chair just in time to catch the smirk on Maggie's lips as she adds, "Again."

"He asks for my opinion, and then he just–" Natalie replies glancing back to her right towards to exam room four and the glass door separating the patient and his mom from the hustle and bustle of the emergency department. She can't see much of her patient from her seat behind the desk, but she can see the back of Will's head. Ginger hair bobbing up and down as he examines the patient again.

"Ends up doing exactly what you told him in the first place because he knows you're right," Maggie interrupts furiously typing away on the Mac's keyboard. Her smirk has morphed into a wide grin thanks to the chuckle she tacks onto her comment, and her laugh deepens when Natalie looks back at her with a pointed look.

"More like he's afraid I'll report him to Goodwin," she sasses back because everyone knows she would. Has, in fact, done so before. Many times.

"Uh huh," Maggie agrees twisting in her chair to look at Natalie and bobbing her head towards the exam room and the spot where the two doctors got into another one of their spats. "And then he wouldn't be able to follow you around like a lovesick puppy."

"He does not," Natalie retorts because, half the time, she and Will are fighting. Which means that she's going about her business in the emergency room pointedly avoiding him and giving him the silent treatment when he tries to talk to her.

"Pretty sure that says otherwise," the charge nurse says with a quick downward glance towards Natalie before she turns back to the computer. And the emergency room doctor immediately moves her left hand from the armrest of the chair to run against the side of stomach, to try and calm the owner of the foot that's currently jammed up against her ribs.

The most recent argument has sent the baby into a frenzy – kicks, pokes, and jabs every time his pain-in-the-ass father had the gall to throw comeback after comeback at his mom. But things have quieted now that she's taken a seat, that Natalie's had some time to stretch out her sore muscles and take deep breaths.

"I meant that ring on your finger," Maggie adds when she spies what Natalie is up to out of the corner of her eye, and Natalie's gaze shifts from staring at the top of her sloping stomach to the gold band on her ring finger. The ring itself is simple – nothing to snag on the latex gloves she pulls on and off throughout the day – but it symbolizes something messy and complicated and unexpected and kind of perfect.

"But that works, too," Maggie finishes as she presses her hand up against Natalie's belly. She's one of the few people that Natalie allows to touch her – a perk of being the birthing coach – and Natalie is quick to move her hand into position, to press Maggie's fingertips up against the foot jammed up against her ribs.

"This little guy's way more active than Owen ever was," the brunette informs her friend, and Maggie just snorts in reply as she glances over towards the exam room four because she and Natalie and everyone in this hospital knows it's because this baby is a Manning-Halstead. Because he was never gonna be some sedate kid in utero along for the ride with a mom who signs up for a double residency because she can't decide between pediatrics and trauma and a dad who jumps right in – often times, without thinking – before he's even called upon to assist.

The opening of the glass door grabs both Maggie and Natalie's attention, and the two women watch as Will steps out into the busy emergency room. All they can see, at first, is the top of the ginger's head as Will pours over the electronic chart in his hand, as he punches in an order for a procedure that Natalie likely recommended. But Doctor Halstead eventually lifts his gaze, catches the two women staring at him, and sort of falters in his step towards the charge desk.

And there's a sort of hesitation in his eyes as he takes another step forward, as he shifts his gaze from Natalie to Maggie and back again. But a swift kick to the ribs causes Natalie's eyes to narrow, and the subtle shake of her head side to side is all the answer Will needs. He ducks down the hallway leading towards the elevators and pathology without a word; she leans her back against the chair deciding that she'll deal with him later. Have one last blowout – probably in the doctor's lounge – before they relieve Helen of her overnight babysitting duties, get Owen off to kindergarten, and crash in bed together.

And Natalie lets her eyes close for a moment as she contemplates waffles for breakfast, the comfort of her and Will's king size mattress, and the fact that Owen is old enough for kindergarten now. Marches off towards the front door of his school – or, the car, if Will's the one taking him in – with his Iron Man backpack and an excited determination in his eyes that reminds her of Jeff. That, lately, makes her wonder if her little boy will come down to Med with Grandma Helen next month to meet his baby brother with that same look in his eyes.

The quietness of her contemplations are interrupted by a loud crash, by yelling voices, and Natalie's eyes fly open. as she attempts to push herself up out of the chair. Surprisingly agile given the weight and cumbersomeness of her belly, Natalie stands and shifts her gaze about the emergency room from one exam room to next. Finally fixates on the source of the noise as the arguing voices rise higher and higher, and she rushes off towards the opened glass door of exam room four.

"Maggie, call security," Natalie yells back over her shoulder as she steps around the charge desk, as she notices the way Will's young patient – a seven-year-old boy with acute stomach pain – has clamped his hand over his ears. The short, twenty-something women Will introduced to her as the young boy's mother is currently in a screaming match with some unknown guy, and he's giving the tongue lashing back just as good as Ms. Galloway has been able to dish it out.

"Your piece of shit boyfriend did this to him, didn't he?" The man yells just as Natalie reaches the couple, and a couple of expletives fall from the man's mouth when Nat tries to interject herself into the conversation. When she tries to put herself between the arguing couple; when she tries to introduce herself as Doctor Manning and ascertain what's going on here.

"What's goin' on is that some guy's been fucking with my kid," the man responds. The good four or five inches he's got on Natalie affords her a good view of the vein throbbing in his neck, but it also means that he towers over her. That every advancing step he makes towards the mother of his son puts him running directly into Natalie's open palm as she tries to hold him back, as she tries to defuse the situation.

"You aren't even supposed to be here, Carl," Ms. Galloway snaps over Natalie's right shoulder. "You get Benji every other weekend and on Wednesdays. It's Tuesday."

"Not for long," Carl retorts running right up against Natalie's palm again as he advances on her and his ex. "He keeps ending up in the hospital and–"

The screaming and the yelling escalates over Carl's threat; Ms. Galloway asserting that Benji hasn't been to the ER since last October and Carl replying that he's had to spend a Wednesday four months ago at Med getting Benji's arm put in a cast, getting the third degree from cops who think he's the culprit. And both parents are pushing up against Natalie, using her as a bumper against releasing the physical side of their anger towards one another.

"Hey," a loud voice calls out as Carl bumps up against Natalie again, as her hand falls from his chest to her belly. And she barely has time to skim her fingers against her side before the weight being pressed against her is gone, before Carl is being pushed backwards towards the wall of the exam room by one of the security guards employed by Chicago Med.

She knows that voice, of course, and Natalie looks up to see her brother-in-law pinning Carl up against the wall. Yelling at the guy to back up, to knock it off as he curls his left hand around Carl's jaw and uses his right arm to hold Carl in place. One of the other security guards has pulled Ms. Galloway to the other side of the room leaving Natalie to stand unencumbered in the middle of the room and allowing Maggie the space she needs to get to Benji, the calm the little boy with silent tears streaming down his face.

"You good, Nat?" Jay questions as Natalie's gaze shifts around the room, as her hand presses up against the now still foot lodged against her ribs. And Natalie's eyes finally focus on Jay's; taking in the way he's rather effortlessly holding Carl in place and the deep concern in his eyes.

"Yeah," Natalie replies before shaking her head, before turning her attention towards Maggie and Benji. The examination room is flooded with extra security guards, who help drag Ms. Galloway and Carl away over their loud protestations, and hospital personnel, including Ms. Goodwin, who instructs Doctor Choi to step in for Natalie while she works on getting two cops from the nearest district over to sort this out.

And as much as Natalie wants to stay, wants to asses that Will's patient – _her patient_ – is okay, part of her is relieved to see that Maggie's got Benji wrapped in her arms and Ethan is working on making him laugh with that silly balloon glove Doctor Charles taught them all so she can step out. Because her head is spinning. Because custody disputes escalate quickly and she's should have known better than to step in.

The other doctors and nurses on staff tonight give her small, tight smiles as she passes by, as she makes her way into the doctor's lounge. The room is – blissfully, thankfully – empty, and Natalie is able to sink into the office chair parked in front of the computer without prying eyes. Without anyone staring at her wondering if she's going to emotionally or physically fall apart. Without anyone to interrupt her as she leans her head against the back of the chair, presses her left hand to her side, and feels the quick strum of her heart followed by the now comforting feel of that foot jabbing her over and over again in the ribs.

The quiet, of course, only lasts so long, and the whoosh of the door being pushed open sends Natalie's eyelids fluttering upward. The Halstead standing in the doorway is younger than the one she expected, but no less worried than Will would be, and Natalie forces herself to sit up a little straighter as she smiles at Jay.

"Thanks for your help back there," Natalie says as her brother-in-law steps into the room, as the door softly clicks shut behind him. Jay bobs his head in reply – in the nearly six years she's known him, Jay's never been very good at taking compliments when it comes to doing his job – and Nat watches as his gaze carefully, respectfully slides down her body. A once over to make sure she's okay that stalls when he notices the placement of her hand.

"I'm fine," she adds before he can ask making sure to emphasize the words, to add some finality that will hopefully smooth out the lines of concern etched into his face. "Your nephew's just got his foot where it doesn't belong."

"Sounds like Will," Jay adds with a grin, and his eyes sparkle with a kind of smirking mirth that Natalie has seen for a long time now. Not since before her brother-in-law's fiance got sick and Will inserted his foot into his mouth so badly that only surgery could remove it. Or, at the very least, a long conversation between two brothers who have very different approaches to life.

Natalie wasn't there for the argument, but she picked up enough from Will's muttered rants to her and Jay's avoidance of his brother and those two or three chemo rounds she's sat through with Erin to get the gist of the argument. To know that Will ran his mouth off about experimental drugs because he's got to save everyone; to know that Will questioned why Jay was sticking around because that's what he did when his own mother got sick.

That last bit has been hard for her to stomach since she pieced it together from Erin's drug-addled yet still frustratingly vague references to how she wishes Jay would be like Will, how she wouldn't blame him if he ran off to New York City and avoid all this because that's what she wishes she could do. Hard because she sees Will go toe-to-toe with her and other doctors and Ms. Goodwin on a daily basis in order to save his patients and that guy isn't reconcilable with the one who couldn't deal with his mother's cancer, couldn't deal with those close to him being hurt. Hard because Will's known and see how his brother is with Erin for seven years and still says these things, which makes her wonder how he views these last five – as friends, as a couple, as husband and wife – with her.

"Here," Jay says pulling Natalie from her thoughts, and she lifts her gaze to see him holding out a cup of water to her. He must have snagged a cup from the counter over by the door and filled it without her noticing, and she gratefully accepts the thoughtful gesture with both hands. Raises the paper cup to her lips and very nearly swallows it all as Jay moves to take a seat in the empty office chair beside her.

And she trades Jay smiles as s.

"Very first day I met your brother," Natalie wistfully informs Jay as she trades him the near empty cup for the outstretched pillow in his hand. She smiles as she tucks it behind her back to help elevate some of the pressure that comes with a spine bowed outward by pregnancy before continuing on with her story, "he saw me sitting down working on charts and rubbing my lower back – I was probably five months by that point – and he handed me a pillow. Didn't say anything. Just went on like it was completely normally. Now, he pretty much follows me around with pillows. I'm gonna use one to smother him, if he's not careful."

The story and the wide grin on Natalie's face causes Jay to crack a smile, and Natalie wonders if it's because he's been reminded of a story that Will told her the one time she verbally threatened to smother him with the next pillow he hands to her. About how when the Halstead brothers were eight and nine, their mother took all the pillows in the house – the ones on the beds, the throw pillows on the couch – and locked them up in the basement because her wild, crazy, rambunctious boys wouldn't stop hitting each other with them. That Saint Elizabeth – because that's how Will talks about her mom, if she does at all – lost two lamps, a picture frame, and a mirror from her boys roughhousing and trying to smother one another with pillows.

"I'll hold him down the next time you need help," Jay replies with a chuckle as he smooths out the crooked, black tie of his security uniform. It's been odd for Natalie to see Jay in something other than his blue jeans, Henleys, and black sweatshirt.

There's the occasional suit – and Erin beside him in some knockout dress that runs completely counter to her normal attire of plaid shirts and blue jeans – and the police dress blues he wore to the Chicago Med - Fire - PD fundraising gala four months ago, but the sight of him in this gray, long-sleeve shirt and non-star shaped badge clipped to his chest is still foreign and odd.

She knows why he's wearing this, though. Understands as a doctor in one of Chicago's busiest emergency rooms how quickly bills can stack up for the sickest patients. And she wishes that Jay would let her and Will do more than just talk to Ms. Goodwin about getting him some swing shifts as a security guard or check in on Erin when he and Voight get stuck working a case. It would take some finagling – she and Will both still have student loans from medical school that they're paying off plus they've got Owen and the new baby – and Will would have to extract his foot from his mouth, but they could do it. Want to do it.

But that damn Halstead pride. She knows it all too well; ran right up against it with his brother less than an hour ago. And she knows she's not going to get very far with Jay on that topic so Natalie shakes away the thought, lifts her gaze upward and focuses on him.

"You doing okay?"

The simple question is, of course, a loaded one, and Natalie watches as Jay's posture slumps ever so slightly. Jay – like his brother – is a horrible liar, and so when he answers that he's fine, Natalie kicks her foot out to nudge the wheels at the base of Jay's chair and pull his attention back to her.

And she briefly wonders how Erin puts with this when she sees the rigidity of Jay's jaw and the hardness of his gaze because Will's usually pretty forthright about his emotions, but his brother is the polar opposite. She didn't even know for the first couple of months of seeing Erin and Jay interact at Med that they were anything other than professional acquaintances until Will came into work one morning talking about how his brother finally grew a pair and kissed Erin in front of everyone as Molly's.

"How's Erin doing? Her wrists still bothering her?"

The dip in the firm line of Jay's lips gives Jay's answer away, and Natalie frowns as Jay reaches up to rub his fingers against the temple of his forehead.

"It's gettin' worse. Voight's got her drinkin' out of plastic cups because she keeps dropping glasses. Really pisses her off," he adds after a pause, after he shifts uncomfortably in his chair. As long as she's known him, she's known that Jay doesn't really like talking about Erin. Unless it's about how strong she is, how she's the toughest cop he knows. Acts like saying anything else might be a betrayal of her trust.

Which is why it's surprised Natalie these past few months when Jay's pulled her aside, when he's called her cell phone directly and asked for a second opinion about Erin's treatment plan or her scar management or her mental health, in general. The heat of his questions, the anxiety that lurks under his voice has always made her uncomfortable because she's not an oncologist nor did she specializes in orthopedics. But she is Jay's sister-in-law and she is Erin's friend and she gets that cancer can feel really isolating and scary. Even for doctors.

"Her oncologist will probably have her do physical therapy to build up her wrists again," Natalie says leaving off the bit about how Erin will also have to work on building up her abdominal muscles should she decide to have reconstruction performed later on.

Erin's oncologist and her plastic surgeon had encouraged her to hold off, and both Natalie and Will had agreed after Jay had shown them her scans and they had see the way the cancerous mass twisted around her body, the way it had spread to her lymph nodes. Thankfully, the liver and the lungs and the surrounding tissues had come back cancer free, but that didn't mean the months of chemo and radiation wouldn't be hard on Erin's body. Hasn't been hard on her or Jay.

"She still refusing to take anything?" Natalie asks softly as she reaches behind her back to adjust the pillow again, and she frowns when Jay slowly nods his head up and down. Natalie's heard some grumblings about Erin and banana peels from Will, listened to him throw that out when he was pissed at Erin for breaking off her and Jay's engagement to get why Erin's so afraid of taking the pills. But she's also a doctor and a caregiver and realist, and she knows that Erin must be in a hell of a lot of pain. Jay, too, considering he has to watch this.

"I'm not gonna force her to take something," Jay snaps when Natalie starts down her usual line of questioning about whether or not they've considered alternative pain management that she can't possibly abuse – IV drips, for example – or working through her concerns with someone like Doctor Charles. And Natalie holds her hands up in mock surrender, forces herself to smile so Jay will calm down and they can resume their conversation.

But her efforts and her patience is for naught at the whooshing sound of the door to the doctor's lounge being pushed open because Will comes striding in the room – anxious worry all over his face – and Jay moves out of the way so he isn't blocking Will's path. Stands up straight and rigid and prepares to leave as Will slides one hand against Natalie's cheek and another against the swell of her stomach.

"I'm fine," Natalie asserts repeatedly making sure her voice is heard over Will's rapid fire line of questioning and comments that he only now heard what happened. "Your brother stepped in before anything happened."

The comment causes Will's head to snap to the left, and his eyes widen as he finally takes in the fact that his wife wasn't alone. And Natalie has to sort of shrug Will's hand off from her body in encouragement, but he does eventually step forward with an outstretched hand.

"Thanks, man," Will says with deep sincerity in his voice that is complete contrast to the stiffness of his gesture and the rigidity of his body. And Jay nods his head, mumbles something about just doing his job as he gives into the gesture and shakes Will's hand.

The handshake lasts only a few seconds, but it's something, and Natalie cannot help the smile that spreads across her face. The same smile that falls when Will starts fussing over her after Jay leaves the room because she hasn't forgotten their argument from earlier and, just because she got pushed around a bit, doesn't mean he's out of the dog house. Not without offering more of an olive branch to her and his brother.


	3. Part Three

Ruzek's scrawl becomes even more illegible as the paperwork falls from his hands, flutters down to the floor, and then is crunched under his foot as he pushes himself up away from the table. The leg of the chair he had been occupying catches on the edge of the rug covering most of the dining room's hardwood floors, and Hank wrestles with it for only a moment before he gives up. Before he stops worrying about the china cabinet behind him and lets the damn thing crash down to the floor with a sound that echoes the one coming from upstairs.

The sick thud – the startling thud – had caused his heart to leap in his chest, and the pounding only grows louder in his ears when he starts up the stairs taking them two steps at a time. His socks slip on the hardwood of each step; his normally rigid and confident posture collapsing so quickly that he has to reach out to steady himself on the banister.

And a curse falls from his lips because he's tearing through his own house without his boots on out of respect for Camille's rule about work boots in the dining room. Sunday best or socks. That's it. And you can't teach an old dog new tricks.

Can't stop the memory of Camille admonishing him for tracking mud through her dining room early on in their marriage melding with one from the weeks before she passed when he wrestled Justin into a suit, cajoled Erin into putting on a dress, and tried to do one of her Sunday dinners.

Hank ended up paying someone to come in and clean that damn rug anyways because Erin and Justin started bickering and knocked a whole platter of lasagna onto the floor. He planned to make those two hellions pay for it – take it out of Justin's allowance and hit Erin up next payday – but then Camille had laughed so hard she cried and it was worth the ninety-nine dollar charge. Would pay out his entire pension to hear that again, to have her here for this.

Because Camille would have already beat him up the stairs, would have pushed her way right into this room and barked out orders at him before he reached the doorway. Wouldn't have – he realizes as he reaches the door to Erin's room – left her cellphone downstairs on top of that mountain of chicken scratch his unit calls completed paperwork.

The door is old – expands and contracts with the changes in weather – and it takes him a minute to jimmy with it, to wish Halstead or Atwater were around before he turns and throws his shoulder up against it. The hinges creak loudly as the door swings open, and the light from the hallway illuminates the darkened bedroom. Casts a long stream of light – a spotlight, almost – onto the crumpled mass on the floor beside the bed trying to right itself.

"I'm okay," the gravelly voice calls from the floor as she pushes her palm into the hardwood floor. And her voice breaks, of course, when the pain in her wrist flickers across her face – sullen eyes, pale almost translucent skin – with the effort.

"I just stood up too quickly," she adds as though that explanation is cause enough for him to release the tension in his jaw. And he grits his teeth further even as years of training, of being first on scene for some pretty heinous things kicks in so that he moves calmly, steadily towards her. Sinks down on bended knee beside her and presses on hand against her shoulder as he lets his gaze slide around the room. That same hardened, cautious gaze he uses when he and the unit are securing a scene.

There's no criminal in the room – not that he expected there to be one – but there's also no cell phone as far as he can tell. Just a stack of Erin's clean clothes on the dresser, a still unpacked suitcase on the floor, and a quilt of Camille's draped haphazardly over the chair in the corner giving the appearance that's where Halstead slept last night.

Voight's not an idiot. He knows that Halstead squeezes all six feet of himself into that twin-sized bed on the nights he thinks Voight's working late. But sometimes it's fun to see the lengths his kids and his unit will go to try and pull a fast one on him. Nice to know that Halstead hasn't gotten much better at lying when it comes to thumbing his nose at Voight's rules about Erin.

About the young woman who stirs who rolls her cold cheek into the warmth of his palm hen Hank moves to cup her cheek with his hand. About the young woman he raised who looks up at him with eyes that struggle to focus and betray the lie she peddles about being okay.

"You lose consciousness?" Hank questions as he strums his thumb against her jaw line. He watches her eyes for her tell – the flicker to the right, the dropping of her chin to her chest – and he lets his jaw unclench slightly when it doesn't come as Erin promises that she never lost consciousness. That she was still pretty out of it when she went to stand up; that she got all twisted up in the blankets and the clothes on the floor.

"Told you and Halstead to clean this place up," he gruffly reminds her as he curls his left hand around her upper arm and moves to right her. To help her into the seated position now that he's confident she won't slump right back over, won't lose consciousness again from the sudden movement. Learned that the hard way with her a couple weeks back and had to scramble to keep her from hitting her head on the way down – had to move without the deliberateness and control and confidence that usually marks his movements.

This thing with Erin – her passing out, losing consciousness in the shower or in the car or at the kitchen table – is new for him. Not something he ever went through with Camille. And getting that call from Jay that Erin had passed out in the shower when no one was home with her? Arriving at Med to find Halstead fully clothed and soaking wet with Erin's blood on his hands?

That was the end of her living alone. Moved her back into her old bedroom, told Halstead he could take Justin's old room or the couch, and talked to Trudy about being a little lenient with loaning out her patrol officers so he could make sure someone from his team – Al, Tonio, Burgess, Mouse, Atwater, Ruzek – could be here with her when he couldn't. When Halstead couldn't.

Because he had to hand it to the guy, had to give credit where it was due. Not many guys would stick around through this; not many guys would come back time and time again after being let off the hook. And he knows that Erin tried that, tried to push him away in order to save him from getting hurt because while he's never been one for status updates about their relationship, this the daughter he raised and he knows Erin.

Knew that she would likely give Halstead hell – something about being independent from him, about making her own choices without Hank – but secretly appreciate the gesture of respect when Jay came to him, looked Voight in the eye, and asked for permission to marry her. Knew that the ring missing from her finger and from the chain around her neck the night he came home to find her sitting alone in living room waiting to talk to him probably had more to do with her than with Halstead. String of broken hearts since she was fifteen and all.

Of course, that night, he thought she was coming to tell him – at best – that she wanted a transfer out of the unit and – at worst – that he was gonna be a grandpa again. Hadn't expected this; hadn't expected he'd be on the phone with Sharon Goodwin over at Med cashing in all the favors he had and then some as the terror and the fear of something he can't control touched their lives. Again.

"Where's Jay?" Erin rasps out drawing his attention back to her, and Voight's gaze slides from the small scar at the top of her skill – a reminder of why she's living here – to meet her eyes. To catch the flicker of confusion in them that echoes all the looks Camille used to give him towards the end when the pain ravaged her body and muddled her mind.

"He's on shift over at Med," Hank reminds her breathing out a huff of relief when the confusion in her eyes is replaced with understand. With remembrance that she and her stubborn fiancé – if she's still calling him that – are stretching themselves to the max to pay for the doctors and the medicines that insurance won't cover. Erin's dipping into her pension early and Jay's picking up extra shifts over at Med – exposing himself to germs Erin doesn't need to be around – because Halstead doesn't like where the money in Hank's safe downstairs comes from.

Not that there's much of it these days. Unrest in the city over charges of police brutality led to more oversight, more of the Ivory Tower and politics invading into how Voight and his unit and the rest of the men and women of the Chicago Police Department do their jobs.

And some of that money in the basement is earmarked for a different purpose. Crinkled bills tucked into an envelope that Camille saved from Christmas money in the years after Erin came to live with them and set aside to pay for Erin's wedding dress. Hank hasn't touched that money yet, but he considers it when Jay's brother starts talking about some trial or he sees the neatly stacked bills in a drawer in Halstead's desk or he even just looks at Erin.

Figures Camille would forgive him if it meant Erin made it to her own wedding. If it meant Erin could shift in her seated position against the bed without whimpering in pain, without clutching her wrists and blinking back the tears forming in the corner of her eyes.

"You been able to keep anything down?" He questions remembering the mess on his kitchen floor earlier tonight, the half-eaten lasagna forgotten on the table. The doctors were all adamant that they try, that the find something she can stomach and just keep feeding it to her. But that something keeps changing – pot roast the first few weeks, lasagna more recently – and Erin's body is becoming gaunter. Sicker. More engulfed by Halstead's sweatshirt with each passing day.

"Scrambled eggs," Erin whispers out after a momentary pause. Hank's not sure if the pause is because the chemicals being pumped into are affecting her memory or because it's truly been a long time since she's had them. But he'll go with it, run down to the corner store if it turns out there aren't any eggs in that fridge full of homemade lasagnas downstairs.

And so he moves his hand from her cheek to her right bicep, curls his other hand around her left arm once more, and moves to his feet. Carefully, gently pulls her upward so as not to tug on the still healing scar and draw her attention to what isn't there anymore. His deliberate slowness allowing his gaze to notice every flicker of pain across her face, every grimace as her aching joints unfurl and she stands on two feet.

The dim lit in the room gives him the excuse to hold onto her for a bit longer. He doesn't want her tripping over that still unpacked suitcase or the dirty clothes on the floor or the stack of audiobooks by the front door that Halstead brought home from the public library for Erin to listen to when she is too nauseous to watch television. To do anything more than lie in bed with her eyes clamped tightly shut. But Erin is Erin and she shakes off his embrace when they step out into the hallway, when they reach the top of the stairs.

Her grip on the banister is light and her back is to him, but Hank still catches the way her body shakes with pain with every step and his lips pull into a tight grimace. His hand still ghosts against the back of the oversized sweatshirt she's wearing in preparation of catching her if she falls. Or, more likely, catching himself because his socks slip on the stairs once more despite the slow and deliberate pace both he and Erin are taking.

Eventually, they both make it into the kitchen. Erin shuffling over to one of the stools at the kitchen table; Hank striding over to the fridge to pull out the eggs. He grabs the carton of orange juice, too, because Erin could use the vitamins and because orange juice was one of the only things Camille could keep down. Something about the sweetness or the tangy taste that she could tolerate when everything else tasted awful and turned her stomach.

And Hank recognizes that the orange juice will be better for Erin's empty stomach than water. That he needs to get something solid in her before she takes one of those pills that have been left untouched up in the cabinet above the stove. So he pours her a glass as he watches her knead her thumb into her wrist trying to alleviate some of the pain out of his peripheral vision.

Listens to the whimper that escapes as she shifts in her chair. Sees that brave mask return as she drops her hands to her lap when she catches him watching him. Makes up his mind once and for all as the memory of Camille in this very same position flickers to the forefront of his mind. Already watched his wife be ravaged by cancer; not gonna watch his daughter suffer through unnecessary pain as her body tries to fight the cancer that stole her body, paused her career, and upended her relationship.

"Hank," she warns as she watches him stride over to the stove, open the cabinet, and pull out the bottle of opiates prescribed to him. Erin repeats his name when he swipes the plastic cup of orange juice from the counter. Says it even louder a third time with a determined grit to her voice when he places the plastic cup and the pill bottle down in front of her.

"Take two now," Hank instructs tapping his index finger against the top of the bottle. "You can have one every eight hours after that."

"I don't want it," she hisses back shifting in her chair, flexing her fingers against the top of the table as though she plans to leave. But her movements only manage to prove his point because the pain in her eyes amplifies, because she looks away from him as she blinks back tears.

"Erin," he gruffly replies as he sinks down onto the stool opposite the table from her. Hank waits for her to look at him, and then eventually reaches out to curl his hand around her shoulder so her glassy eyes twist to right to meet his gaze. "You're in pain. A lot of fucking pain. And you and I both know it doesn't have to be like that."

There's no reply on Erin's part. No nod of her head or glimmer of agreement or even recognition of what he's saying in her eyes. And, for a moment, he feels like he's back to sitting at this table with fifteen-year-old Erin who didn't want to believe that he and Camille were serious about this being her home. Serious about them trusting her so long as she told them everything – the good, the bad, and the ugly.

And this – the cancer that stole his wife and is now trying to steal his daughter, the pain that she's subjecting herself to – is the ugly. And he's having a hell of a time trusting Erin's judgement right now when she won't tell him why she's so adverse to the pills. Because he knows her history, knows how the banana peels in her life have lead to pills and worse before, but this ain't that and he isn't – he and Halstead aren't assholes pumping her full of drugs and using her in some bastardized version of love.

"You don't get it," Erin finally breathes out in an emotional whisper.

"You're right. I don't get it," he agrees with a gentle squeeze of her left shoulder and a small nod of his head towards the pill bottle between them. "Cause I'm watching you go through this and I'm – I'm thinking of Camille and how much pain she went through. And how sometimes this helped her have a good day – let her watch Justin play baseball and quiz you for your detective's exam. So explain this to me until I do, kiddo."

The lull in their conversation is longer this time. Erin shifting her gaze down to the wrists she hides in the sleeves of Halstead's sweatshirt; Erin trying to hide her eyes behind a curtain of hair that no longer exists. But he waits – waits for her to find the courage to tell her the truth – and his eyes soften further when she finally lifts her gaze, when his red-rimmed eyes dark with pain meet hers.

"Cause I don't know if I'll be able to stop if I start."

The confession he was afraid of because he knows Erin, knows how she trusts herself the least is finally out there robbing the room of oxygen and leaving them both unsure of what to say. Just like when Erin was sixteen and coming clean about her and Charlie. Just like when he was facing facts about Camille's prognosis and trying to get Justin and Erin to do the same.

"I hurt so bad, Hank, and I just want it to be ov–"

"Hey," Hank interrupts as his stomach flips. All that hardened exterior giving away to the big old softy – the guy only his family gets to see – inside that doesn't like to hear her talk like that. Doesn't like the way it dredges up memories of him holding Camille late at night as she shook with pain and begged for this to be over.

Because while he's not the kind of guy to pin a teal or pink ribbon to his lapel, to buy into all that bullshit about positive attitudes, that doesn't mean he can stomach the idea of watching Erin slide into depression just like Camille did. Of seeing the similarities between Erin and Camille, between his daughter and his wife stack up further and further.

"You want me to flush these down the toilet and take you over to Med for an IV? Fine. I'll call Sharon and get you all set up. Or, I'll lock these up downstairs and work out some kind of schedule with Halstead. But watching you sitting here in this much pain? That–"

His voice breaks and then trails off because watching her go through this, especially after he went through it twice with Camille? That's harder for him to stomach than any of the thousands of crime scene he's seen in his years on the job.

He'll be that guy in her life – the one that pushes pills on her – if it means saving her and him and, hell, even Halstead who went through all this before with his mother from a tiny bit of pain. If it means she keep some food down or get a full night's sleep or stay awake through a Hawks game or do a better job of sneaking Halstead into her bedroom.

Because he'd rather be cooking her eggs in the morning and yelling at her to wake up like he did when she was seventeen and dragging her ass about getting to first period at St. Ignatius. Because he'd rather watch her – his lone hockey fan in a house of football and baseball fans – get wound up about the Hawks losing to the Red Wings. Because he'd rather be making disgruntled noises about Halstead's skivvies mixed in with Erin's clothes in the hamper when there's no ring on her finger. Rather be doing anything than watch Erin's body ravaged by pain as she tries to fight this.

And so he releases his grip on her shoulder, snatches the pill bottle of the table, and pops off the lid. Swallows back some smartass comment about her not being able to open the child lock with the way her wrists are right now as he plops two pills on the table beside the glass of orange juice in front of her. Sits back and waits for Erin to make a decision, to realize that the ugliness of this – her pain, her creeping depression, her confession – doesn't mean he's stopped trusting her.


	4. Part Four

During the day, there is a steady flow of doctors, nurses, radiologists, patients, and their families through Chicago Med's overpriced eatery trying to either calm their nerves with a selection of sodium-free meals or to fuel up with the only half-decent coffee for miles during grueling shifts. At this time of night, however, the cafeteria is practically deserted save for the steady hum of the mechanical floor scrubber that seems to have rendered the few occupants - the elderly couple in the corner clutching Styrofoam cups, the cashier focused entirely on her phone - utterly mute and unaware.

Because no one looks over at him as he pushes open the door, and no one reacts when it swings shut with a whooshing sound behind him. And that fact sort of takes him by surprise because his brother is the kind of person that never misses a thing. Always has one eye trained on the door ready to protect and serve, to react and respond.

A sure sign of exhaustion, Will thinks to himself as he takes in the stoop of his brother's back, the way Jay seems almost resigned as he leans forward with his elbows on his knees. As he watches Jay fumble with the orange in his hand. Tug the peel off in a series of chunks that he unceremoniously drops onto the table rather than sliding his thumb underneath the skin so the peel comes off in one long strip.

Or, maybe this is just his brother's way of ignore him, Will considers as he pauses besides the door because that's pretty much how things have been between him and Jay for the last couple of months. Stiff and courteous and professional when they happen to be on shift together at Med, and then pretending like each other didn't exist when they weren't.

And that's been hard because there's a lot of things Will would like to talk about with his brother - his latest struggle in moving from the role of honorary uncle to dad with Owen, his fears about this new baby coming so quickly on the heels of his marriage to Nat, his latest legal run-in over a patient's medical wishes, his concerns about their father's increasingly violent behavior, and, of course, his worry about Erin's health and how all this is impacting Jay.

Things he can't talk about with Natalie either because they'll worry her or lead to another fight in the doctor's lounge at Med or have her directing him to the cafeteria during a lull on shift because she's tired of whatever is going on between him and Jay. Which is exactly what happened tonight and, ultimately, the reason why he forces himself to walk across the room. To reach for the empty chair beside Jay, pull it out, and plop down without asking for permission to join him.

The glare Jay shoots at him - the hardened gaze, the slightly furrowed brows - is the same one he'd used to throw at him when they were five and six and Will would let Jay take the fall for a broken lamp or a shattered picture frame. The same one he used to imagine Jay was giving him through the phone back when Mom was sick and Will would come up with some excuse as to why he couldn't come home - needed to study for his boards, couldn't swap out shifts as an intern - knowing full well Jay could hear the DJ in the background. The same one he's seen so many times over the years that he tries not to let it phase him as he leans back in his chair, as he folds his arms over his chest and watches Jay go back to picking at the orange in his hands.

"Thank you...again...for helping Nat," Will trails out after a moment, and the small smile on his face drops and fades as Jay merely nods his head and grunts out some kind of acknowledgment. A sure sign he's been spending too much time with Voight; a joke Will contemplates making until that filter Natalie's been on him to develop kicks in.

"What do you want, Will?" Jay asks in a monotone voice as Will shifts in his chair leaning forward to watch his brother pick at the shredded orange in his hands. The question that Will wants to ask - the one about Erin's health and about how Jay is holding up - is sitting on the tip of his tongue, but the tone of Jay's voice causes Will's jaw to snap shut.

And he presses his tongue to the roof of his mouth as he tries to think of another way to reach out to his brother because he knows exactly what will happen if he goes back to the ED without smoothing things over with him. Natalie will give him the cold shoulder, Maggie will cluck her tongue at him, and Dr. Charles will try to impart some wisdom about family dynamics and coping with cancer as though the Halstead brothers haven't already been through this with their mom.

"Nat and I…" Will trails off because there are a lot of things he could say, a lot of issues that he and Nat have been mulling over. But he settles for the easiest, for the copout question that he thinks is less likely to rock the boat. More likely to remind Jay about how things were between them before this wedge was driven between them. "We've been, uh, talking about names for the baby, and I wanted to make sure it was okay with you if we named him after Grandpa."

"Herbert Halstead?" Jay asks snapping his head up to look at Will with a slight look of disgust. Yet there's also a playful tone to his voice that causes Will to smile, to scoff out a laugh as he shakes his head side to side. "That's cruel, man."

"Not Herbert. Sam. Samuel," Will corrects referencing their other grandfather. The one with the cabin up in Wisconsin; the one he and Jay were both pretty close to as kids. And maybe Jay was a tiny bit closer to Grandpa Sam given that he inherited the cabin, but Will had ended up carrying on his last name - Williams becoming William - and it had been Grandpa Sam who helped him pay for college. Got him to the first day of medical school without a crushing amount of debt saddled onto his back.

So Will wants to honor that. Wants his son to be named for the two men in Will's life that he admires most - his grandfather and his brother. But that piece of information - the verbal expansion of the name to Samuel Jay Halstead - did nothing to smooth down Jay's brow or keep Will's younger brother from running fingers sticky from the juice of the orange across his forehead.

"Uh," Will hums out in an attempt to clear his throat as he shifts in his chair. "I know you and Grandpa were close so I wanted to make sure you and Erin weren't planning on using the name."

As soon as the words are out, Will knows he's made a mistake. Jammed his foot so far into his mouth that he'll need Rhodes to surgically remove it. Because Jay's eyes have softened and then hardened again in the blink of an eye, and there's this flash of emotion that Will has only seen a handful of times in his life. Those moments when he failed to be a big brother - a protector from pain and a savior from wicked - in the most egregious ways.

"No," Jay bites out. "We're not planning on using the name. We're not planning on using _any_ names."

It's a reality that Will should have expected given his medical degree - chemotherapy and radiation often lead to early menopause and loss of fertility for cancer patients - and what he knows about his brother's relationship with Erin. The hyper-professionalism; the impending sacrifice of one person's spot in their specialized unit once the ink dried on their marriage certificate per CPD and Voight's rules.

Not to mention the tidbits he's picked up about Erin's family history over the years and his own brother's rocky relationship with their father and how that's probably why they both got so apprehensive and shifty around Owen when a waiter thought he was their kid. Conclusions he's drawn in a sure sign that he's been working with Dr. Charles for far too long, but conclusions that he's been unable to let go of nonetheless.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles out, and Jay just shakes his head as he pops a mangled piece of orange into his mouth. Refuses to look at Will and instead focuses his gaze on the janitor cleaning the floors as he pops in one piece after another.

"It doesn't matter," Jay adds when he's finished tearing through half of the orange, when Will's just about reached the point where he thinks he should get up and leave. And the comment sort of astonishes him because, yeah, maybe he's a little apprehensive about how Samuel Jay Halstead will change his and Natalie and Owen's dynamics, but to have that dynamic taken away from him like this? To have mutinous cells make the call rather than the two adults in the relationship?

"It does matter," Will corrects.

"No, it doesn't," Jay asserts shifting his gaze - eyes flashing dangerously - from the wall to Will. Every word is annunciated; emphasized by the anger that's driven the two of them apart over the last few months. "What matters is Erin. Her getting healthy. Her getting her star back. Her getting to the point where her biggest health concern is the mosquitos up at Grandpa's cabin. Us having kids? That's not even on the list of things that matter now."

"I hear you, but it's a big-"

"You don't hear me," Jay interrupts, and the sound of his voice carries over the hum of the mechanical floor scrubber attracting the attention of the cashier on her phone and the elderly couple in the corner. A fact Jay seems to pick up on because his voice drops down low as he leans closer to Will, as his eyes darken and harden further with every word. "I don't care about kids. I wasn't even sure I wanted them before this. And I came to you because you're my brother and a doctor and I thought you understood about me and Erin and that you could explain her options to me. Not tell me that maybe it would be better if I walked away."

"I never-" Will interjects, but Jay immediately jumps back in and effectively silences him with one look. With a glare that makes Will feel like he's in one of those interrogation rooms back in the district. Straight forward and to the point. Nothing like the cajoling he got from Voight and that detective out of New York back when he first returned to Chicago.

"You did, Will. You said - and I quote - I needed to think about Erin's diagnosis and what that would mean for me and if I wanted that as part of my future."

"You did," Will bites back, and he can feel the gazes of the few people assembled in the cafeteria looking at him. Even the janitor has ceased cleaning the floors to watch them, to listen to Will commit another HIPPA violation in so many weeks as he lays out the facts for his brother. "Erin's cancer is aggressive, Jay. It's spread to her lymph nodes. And while the doctor says he thinks they got it all, the chance of reoccurrence or for the cancer to metastasize someplace else is-"

"I know all of this," Jay asserts, but Will's known him long enough to see that little boy - the younger brother who looked up to him and wasn't quite so hardened by war and loss and time working the streets of Chicago - lurking in Jay's eyes despite the defenses and the brave face he's throwing up for Erin and Voight and Will and everyone else in his life.

"Yeah," Will agrees, "because you've watched every documentary you can find and you call Nat for a second opinion and-"

"No," Jay interrupts again. "Because I was there with Mom at the end when it spread from her lymph nodes to her brain."

The comment sobers Will immediately; relaxes his face and leaves him devoid of all the anger that had been building. The concern that his brother was rushing into a proverbial firefight without a protective vest or an exit plan giving way to the realization that while Will's been suffering from a bad case of tunnel vision - pouring through trial and journal articles that might help Erin, wondering about the impact one outcome out of many might have on his brother - Jay hasn't been.

"And if that - if that happens with Erin," Jay says as his voice wavers ever so slightly, as he dips his gaze to the mangled orange in his hand and takes a deep breath before looking back up at Will. "If Erin looks different or we never have kids, then so be if it. Because I made a promise a long time ago that I'd always have Erin's back, and I'm not going to go back on that - walk away from her - because she got dealt another crappy hand. I'm not Dad, and I'm not you."


	5. Part Five

**Author's Note:** Thank you to those who reviewed the last on how the argument went between Will and Jay, I've decided to expand this story out some more. So the story will loop back through the five characters I've chosen to focus on before reaching the (somewhat altered) planned conclusion.

* * *

The twist of her wrist trying to angle the black remote just right causes her lips to pull into a tight grimace as a wave of pain radiates from her wrist up the length of her arm. The constant pain that normally riddles her body has softened to a dull ache, which means these quick jabs of pain are even more pronounced, and Erin lets out a gruff huff of frustration when the receiver fails to recognize the button currently smashed under her thumb.

She misses her set-up at home. The subtle yet firm couch she can stretch out on; the Apple TV remote that's far more responsive than the one that's supposed to control Hank's decrepit, combination VHS and DVD player. Hank had balked at her bringing anything more than her laptop with her; claimed the public library had more than enough DVDs for her to borrow if she ran out of things to watch. Which she did. Pretty quickly, too, given that Hank never upgraded to a cable package or a DVD player capable of streaming Netflix or Amazon Video.

There wasn't much on the major networks this late at night - mainly infomercials for weight loss pills that she certainly doesn't need now and kitchen contraptions that she'll never bother with - and books are out of the question. Too hard to hold them open with her wrists, and too difficult to concentrate on the small type without feeling nauseous.

And her laptop - her sole gateway to a world beyond the constant news cycles and documentaries on PBS - is upstairs. Too close to Hank's bedroom for her to avoid waking him up, and probably too heavy for her wrists to handle carrying back downstairs. So she's parked herself on Hank's small couch and reconciled herself to dealing with the crappy DVD player, to trying to skip ahead a couple of episodes on the political thriller she and Jay have been watching.

She can't remember what episode they were on. Whether it was nine or nineteen that she fell asleep during, or if it was six or sixteen that she ended up hunched over and vomiting on Hank's hardwood floors when a wave of nausea suddenly struck her. She had planned to fast forward through those scenes that looked familiar to her, but the receiver isn't responding to the remote and her wrist throbs every time she twists it trying to pause or play a scene.

Erin gives it one last shot when the frustration over how this is basically turning into her watching a whole series flicker across the television screen in double time becomes too much. Grits her teeth and angles the remote the other way as she smashes her finger down on the play button.

And she smiles slightly when the DVD player finally complies - the soft moans of the two main characters on the show emanating from the television as the picture begins to play in real time - and settles back into the cushions of the couch. Decides she'll watch whatever episode this is as she releases the remote and lets her throbbing wrist fall to her lap.

"Didn't know I got this channel," a voice grumbles from behind her, and Erin jerks in surprise. The remote goes tumbling to the ground - the plastic casing cracking when it hits the hardwood floor - and the throbbing pain switches from Erin's wrist to her neck over the way she quickly whips it around to look over her shoulder. To look at Hank with wide, startled eyes.

Even after years of living in this house, of memorizing which floorboards creak and making sure to announce her presence so she doesn't get shot, she's never been able to sneak up on people in this house the way Hank does.

She's better about it at work; follows her team in a single file line without a peep when they black out for an op. But in this house? Something - a rattling window, a loose floorboard, a non-oiled door - always gives her away. Never Hank.

"You don't. It's a DVD," Erin sasses back trying to cover for the way her cheeks have begun to grow warm. The smack of the remote against the floor has paused the main characters mid-moan, and Erin's cheeks become even hotter when Hank smacks his lips in disapproval as he glances from her to the TV screen.

"Not from the library."

"Yes, from the library," Erin explains. Burgess had recommended the series; it was something she had watched back when she first got interested in undercover work. And Erin had asked Jay to pick up the first season the last time he hit up the library thinking Russian spies undercover in America sounded interesting enough. That maybe the history elements would be a good compromise from all those documentaries Jay picked out.

But her assertion that the public library doesn't practice censorship the way Voight maybe thinks they should - an argument that certainly would have riddled up Camille - causes her to grimace. The formation of each syllable causes her tongue to swipe against the ulcers in her mouth aggregating the open sores and leaving her mouth frozen in a half-parted 'o' at the conclusion of her statement.

And she pushes her back into the cushions at Hank's uncomfortable shift in posture. Turns her gaze away from him so he can't stare at her open mouth.

She hates when people stare at her. Kids in her class used to do it when she was younger, when she'd come into school with the same dirty clothes she wore yesterday or get a plate with white bread and American cheese in the lunch line because she didn't have money in her account.

Her teachers would do it, too. The younger, less experienced ones pursing their lips as they wondered if they should call someone; the older, more experienced ones prioritizing those kids from her neighborhood who came to school with barely concealed bruises.

The stares happened when she got older, too. At first, because people wanted to know how and why the Voights ended up with a teenage girl. Then, because she wasn't the person she presented herself to be upon arrival at St. Ignatius. And, finally, because she was a rookie patrolman on the West Side with a star pinned to her chest. A white, female patrolman.

Now, they stare because they feel sorry for her. Strangers, mostly, but sometimes those she worked with at the District or interacted with on cases. Sometimes Kim or Natalie; sometimes Hank and Jay.

And seeing that look in their eyes? The pity and the concern and the truth that they know all too well what often comes following a diagnosis like this? That's the hardest. Hurts far more than the pain in her wrists or underneath her left arm or in her mouth because she knows it means that they feel sorry for themselves, that she's hurting them by dredging up memories from their past.

Hank had all but told her that earlier tonight when he pushed the pain pills on her explaining that seeing her like this was reminding him of the pain Camille went through. That the pills helped Camille make it through important moments - Justin's graduation, Erin's promotion to detective - and sleep through the night.

And she knows the same is true of Jay. She's heard him on the days and nights the window in her bedroom doesn't rattle sitting downstairs in the kitchen going over her treatment plan with her oncologist or putting in a call with Natalie. Traced her finger along the scar where her left breast used to be as she listens to him asking if there's another drug or a more promising chemo regime than the one his mom took.

But neither of them would take the out she offered them. Jay refusing to even let her get the words out; Hank packing up her things and moving her back into his house with its crappy DVD player.

One that's programmed to listen to Voight, apparently, because he's picked up the remote in the time since she's turned away and managed to switch it over to the main menu with a single click of a button. She keeps her gaze focused on the television screen even as he lightly drops the remote back into her lap, as he wraps his hand around her shoulder and gives it a gentle squeeze.

He doesn't apologize, and she knows better than to wait for one. Doesn't really expect one in this case, which she reminds him of as she whispers, "You couldn't have know."

Because it's true. She knows from movies and television shows, from books and the few years she had Camille as a mother that parents are supposed to reach for the orange juice when their kids are sick. And the orange juice had worked for Camille so it wasn't outside the realm of possibility as a good choice for her.

But it hadn't been; probably was the biggest disaster in terms of foods she's tried in the last few months. Second only to that time Jay brought home an entire watermelon. Sliced up the whole thing with a comment about it being something his mom could eat, and then had to dump it into the garbage can out back when Erin couldn't stomach it long enough to make it upstairs to the bathroom.

With the orange juice, the nausea - a near constant companion in her life at this point - came first, but the mouth sores came pretty quickly after that. Which made it difficult to stomach the water she needs to swallow done another two of those pills Hank offered her. Difficult to talk or let her tongue sit anywhere inside her mouth.

"The pills helping?" Hank asks as his hand slides from her shoulder to hang limply by his side. She still refuses to look anywhere other than the television annoyed by the slight twinge of hope in his voice, and Erin lets the side of her head fall limply to rest against the couch cushions as she contemplates her answer.

She didn't want to take the pills, and the feelings of manipulation still simmer in the back of her mind. Plus, the pills haven't helped her wrists or alleviated the pain from the sores in her mouth in the time since Hank helped her clean up or he headed upstairs to his bedroom.

But the constant ache of her joints, the discomfort along the chemo port, and the thudding line stitched across her chest has been abated. And the ache in her wrists is likely her fault.

After all, she had used this new absence of pain to gather up the dirty clothes in her bedroom upstairs, carry them all the way down to the basement, and stuffed them into the washing machine ten minutes ago. Subjected herself to dealing with the fucking remote, too, when she could have just gone back upstairs and used her laptop.

"Yeah," she mumbles trying her best not to press her tongue against her cheeks. "For the most part."

She rolls her head to the left just enough to see Hank nod his head out of the corner of her eye, but she turns away when she can feel the heat of his gaze sweeping up and down her body. Taking in her bald head and the old quilt she's got wrapped around her legs and the oversized sweatshirt advertising Antonio's gym that she's using since Jay's hoodie is in the wash.

Probably also trying to suss out what she's got going on upstairs, too. See if he can hear the small, quiet voice inside her suggesting that if she just took one more pill, then all the pain - the physical ache, at least - would be gone.

"I'm fine, Hank," Erin eventually forces out. He continues to stare at her - a clear sign he doesn't believe her - but Erin turns her head to offer him a weak smile and he does eventually move on. Glances over his shoulder down the hallway towards the kitchen and the door leading to the basement.

She must not have closed the door tight because the mechanical thudding of the washing machine is distant but audible as the DVD's main menu reaches the end of its musical loop and the music briefly stops. And this time Erin meets his gaze when he turns to look at her, when he asks if she started the washing machine again.

"You won't wash Jay's clothes," she reminds him with a pointed look.

"Not interested in knowing if Halstead wears boxers or briefs," Hank grumbles out as he folds his arms across his chest. "Don't think he wants me touching his skivvies, either."

"But it's fine for you to know what kind I wear?" Erin questions. It's probably the first time she's made a joke in a while; first time she's been able to pull herself from the fog of pain to tease him. And she knows he's made that same realization because Hank's eyes kind of relax, because he exaggerates his scoff in reply.

"Don't look at yours too close. Just to see if they go with the colors or the whites," Hank informs her with a tight smile. "Don't want a repeat of the blouse incident."

The reminder causes Erin to narrow her eyes further, to emphatically shake her head because the blouse incident had been a one time thing. A minor mistake made by someone who wasn't accustomed to washing her clothes on a regular basis let alone in a washing machine outside a laundromat or one hooked up to truly hot water.

And she had been too embarrassed, too worried about falling out of Camille's sudden good graces to come clean. Worn those stupid, spotty pink blouse with her plaid skirt to St. Ignatius, and refused to ask Camille or Hank for money to buy new ones even as she racked up demerits for breaking dress code.

Hadn't come clean until she came home from school to find Hank and Camille waiting in the living room for her when they should have been worked. Waiting to ask her why Father Paulson said she was deliberately breaking the dress code beyond the hiked up skirts that all the girls her age tried to get away with.

"Warned Halstead about what he was risking with his whites when he asked for my permission."

The comment seems innocuous enough, but Erin's been around Hank long enough to know that everything is deliberate with him. That the comment about Jay asking for Hank's permission to propose - which she once claimed would disqualify any man from dating her let alone marrying her, but appreciated almost as much as Hank did when push came to show - is meant to force her to start thinking about the limbo she's got them stuck in.

Her and Jay as a couple, Hank as a boss and a father, and the three of them as a more awkward version of "Three's Company". Erin stepping into the role as the roommate who passed out in a bathtub, of course.

She knows he wants an answer. Nearly this time last year he had started to pull the same tactic about them setting a date or about them finding a place or about their progress on figuring out which one of them would transfer out of Intelligence because their boss couldn't turn a blind eye signed marriage license. Not if he wanted to keep the Ivory Tower from looking down upon his unit too much.

Some of the answers to Hank's questions are clearer now while others are still up in the air. If her wrists don't get better, if _she_ doesn't get better, then there won't be a question of who gets to stay in the unit and who has to go. Or about which section of the city they'll live in or how they'll get all of Halstead's crap into her apartment while they search.

"You taken anything out of the safe lately?" Erin questions wincing as her tongue presses up against the cold sore as she talks.

"No," Hank gruffly replies, and she lets that fact followed by her silence serve as the answer to his unspoken question. He's the only one with the combination to the safe. The only one who can retrieve the ring she wore around her neck when she was on duty and around her finger when she was off.

Erin knows she hasn't asked for it. And she's pretty sure Jay hasn't either since the last time he tried to give it back to her. When she came clean about why she ended up so unexpectedly; when he cupped her cheek and promised that this didn't change anything.

Even though they both knew that was a lie. Even though she knows Jay, knows enough about his history with his dad to know he'd fall on his sword before he'd end it with her. An unwavering and maddening sense of duty to his partner overriding his sense of self-preservation.

And that fact is exactly why they're living in a undefined limbo again. Because this - the physical changes, the emotional exhaustion, the mental headache of watching the future become an abstract where your plans and dreams slowly die - wasn't fair to Hank and Camille and Justin and her. Nor was it fair to Jay and Will and their.

And it sure isn't fair for them - Jay, Hank, her - and the people who make up their ragtag family - Will, Nat, Justin, the unit - to go through all over again. Wasn't fair for her to be to the bad news in their lives. Again.

A fact she is forced to face every time she feels Jay's fingers on her chest as he helps rubbed in the ointment the surgeon gave her or catches Hank staring at the scar on her head from her fall or the way the pain visibly ravished her body. Looking at her the way he is now as she self-consciously pulls her awkwardly twists wrists closer to her chest. Tries to bury them into the quilt that Hank looks away glancing at the television and the main menu still playing on the screen.

"You got something else for us to watch?" Hank eventually asks after a picture of one the minor characters in her skivvies flickers across the screen.

"The Godfather," Erin offer with a nod of her head over to the wire bookshelf between the dining room and the living room.

And Hank grunts in reply so noncommittally that Erin wonders if he'll decide to go back to bed, if he's forgotten that they watched that on one of her first nights in this house back when she was unsure where she fit in and if she would stay.

But he crosses the room - quiet steps that she still marvels at given the way the hardwood creaks under her weight - and pulls the old VHS from the shelves. Grumbles something about this being a long ass movie to start at this time of night, but pops the movie in and moves over to far end of the couch. Grunts at her until she pulls her feet back and lets him sit down; lets him snatch the remote from her lap and save her from having to fiddle with it.

And then he does the same thing as the movie begins that he did the first time they watched this together - turns to look at her, reaches out to squeeze her shoulder, calls her kiddo, and promises her that things will work out.

Back then, she hadn't believed him, but the gesture had still brought tears to her eyes. Ones the angry, jaded fifteen-year-old she was refused to let fall in front of him. Tonight, she still doesn't believe him, but the gesture once again brings tears to her eyes, and she's too tired and sore and aware that Hank is breaking their family's rule about always telling the truth to stop the few that manage to fall.


	6. Part Six

Natalie reaches up to readjust the positioning of her stethoscope in her ears to an effort to drown out the constant beep of the monitors and help herself focus on the steady drumming of the seven-year-old's heartbeat. The little boy watches her wearily as she moves the cold metal over his chest, and Natalie musters up a smile for him in an effort to reassure him that everything is going to be okay. That she's a doctor and she is here to figure out why his stomach hurts so much.

"Can you take a big breath in for me, Benji?" Natalie asks softly, and the little boy nods his head before giving her an exaggerated inhale followed by a loud exhale that causes his whole body to concave inward. The cautious look on his face is immediately twisted into a panicked frown at the stab of pain that riddles his body, and the little boy's hand tightens its grip around the raising railing of his hospital bed as a chunk of dirty blonde hair falls across his face.

Benji has the same haircut as Owen - or, really, the same non-haircut that is a source of contention between the little boy and his mother and his grandmother - and Natalie instinctively reaches out to push the little boy's hair back. To make it so she can see his eyes and his face and whether or not he's listening to what she has to say.

Unlike Owen, who shies away from her touch with a bray of 'Mom' in an annoyed tone of voice, Benji pulls away with a flash of fear in his eyes, and Natalie's own smile falters at his reaction as thoughts of worse case scenarios race to the forefront of her mind. She's gotten a reputation over the years of being the boy who cries wolf, of going to Ms. Goodwin with suspicions of child abuse before fully investigating the root causes of her patient's injuries.

Yet it had been Benji's father who first planted the idea of abuse in her mind. And although he had been quick to get physical with her, to advance on the mother of his child with such maliciousness, Natalie couldn't deny that there might be some truth to his claims. Especially now after seeing Benji's reaction to her touch and reading further about his Benji's pattern of so-called accidents - a broken arm that went untreated for a few days after the initial break, a finger that was allegedly broken when Benji stuck his hand between two closing doors on the L, a pattern of bruises up and down his legs that skirts the line of 'boys will be boys' - in his medical files.

The behavior of his parents - his father pushing up against Natalie, Ms. Galloway screaming at her ex - had been more than enough to catch the attention of Ms. Goodwin, and Natalie had spied both of Benji's parents seated in the waiting room of the ED. Each of them flanked by a member of Med's security staff; each of them scowling at the other across the room.

A security guard would be detailed to stand near exam room four, too, just in case Benji's parents got any ideas. And given the way Maggie keeps glancing over her shoulder at the closed glass door, Natalie would be willing to hazard a guess that her brother-in-law is the security guard standing just outside the exam room.

Her effort to get the two Halstead brothers to talk had, of course, backfired spectacularly. Will had come back from the hospital's cafeteria practically shaking with rage and had immediately thrown himself into working on the next gunshot victim to be rolled into the ED. Her husband doing what he always does when he's hurt or pissed off or not getting his way - focusing on the physical afflictions that can be bound up with sutures rather than on the non-physical wounds that have festered over the past couple of months.

Natalie hadn't seen Jay come back to the ED. She had been busy rounding on patients and instructing the fourth year medical students through the proper way to start a central line before one of them jams up another fast-paced intervention in the Baghdad exam room to notice his arrival. But Maggie would have - the woman didn't miss a thing - and so too would have Will, which likely explains why he was nowhere to be found while she checked in on his patient.

"It's okay, Benji," Natalie replies as she pulls the stethoscope from her ears and drapes it back around her shoulders. She offers him another smile, holds her hands up slightly so he can see that she doesn't plan to touch him again, and nods over to where Maggie stands on the other side of him. "Maggie is gonna take you upstairs to get a picture of your stomach made, okay?"

"Can my daddy come with me?" The little boy quietly mumbles in a voice that is barely audible over the beeping of the machines behind him. "Or do I have to wait until Wednesday?"

"You know what, Benji," Maggie interjects crouching down slightly so she's eye-level with the little boy. "He's talking to my friend, Ms. Goodwin, right now. Tellin' her all about how long your tummy's been hurting so we can make it better."

"He had to do that last time I was here," Benji calmly informs the nurse, and the suggestion that this is all normal causes the smile on Maggie's face to falter. Her eyes drift upward to meet Natalie's, and the look on her face makes it clear that she would support Nat asking Ms. Goodwin to involve Child and Family Services. "But then we got to go have ice cream afterwards."

"Ice cream?" Natalie asks with heightened interested trying mask her mounting concern behind a joyful tone of voice. She, at least, manages to muster up a genuine smile over the way the little boy vigorously nods his head - it's the same reaction Owen has when asked about the highlights of his day - as she promises that they'll get him back to eating ice cream in no time.

"I'm gonna go call upstairs and make sure they're ready to take a picture of your tummy, okay, Benji?" Maggie asks as Natalie steps away from the gurney and heads towards the door of the exam room, and the older woman follows her lead before adding, "I'll be right back, okay?"

Natalie has barely managed to push open the glass door an inch when Maggie steps up and does it for her. Offers her a shrug when Natalie glares at her for insinuating that she can't handle opening the damn door on her own, and then gestures with the shift of her eyes towards the man in the security guard uniform leaning up against the nurse's station watching her and the ginger standing at the row of computers watching him.

"Figure you need all your strength for dealing with that mess," Maggie replies as she snags the electronic chart out of Nat's hands, and Natalie has to admit that the woman isn't wrong. As always. "I'll call up about the sonogram and let you know when his chem labs come back."

"Thanks, Maggie," Nat says pressing her free hand to the small of her back. The baby has settled over the past few hours - his foot no longer logged up against her lung - and Natalie sort of laughs at the happenstance of it all. Her son finally extracted his foot from where it didn't belong so Mommy can go work on doing the same with Daddy's foot.

Or, maybe, her newest little boy is as big a coward as his daddy because Will pretty much makes a beeline for the further exam room when he catches her staring at him. And Nat lets out a small sigh of frustration as she watches him go, as she lets her gaze drift over to where Jay is standing nearby.

"Ms. Goodwin assign you to this?" Natalie questions as she jerks her thumb over her right shoulder towards exam room four behind her.

"Volunteered," Jay replies as she gets closer to him, and he only halfway turns to face her when she rounds the desk behind him. Keeps one eye on the sliding glass door in a way that Natalie really appreciates, that she finds herself doing more often than not at home when Owen's bedtime rolls around. Her son is quick, stealthy, and silent like his father before him, and he's managed to slip out of his bedroom and she's looked away from the TV screen to find him curled up on the couch next to Will way too many times in the last couple of weeks. Last thing she needs is Benji - or, worse, his mom or dad - pulling the same stunt here in the ED. Putting her back in a position where she and Jay have to get between them again.

"You thinkin' abuse?" Jay questions. The question is spat out like the words leave a disgusted taste in his mouth, and Natalie is sort of taken aback by his reaction given his line of work. Given all the things she knows he sees in a given day on the job; given all the things she figures he saw during his time overseas.

"Yeah," Natalie hums out in a low, sad tone of voice, and she watches anger flicker across her brother-in-law's face. Watches the way his jaw locks and his eyes darken as he glances away from exam room four towards the waiting room where Benji's parents sit. Watches the sad shake of Jay's head, the slump of his shoulders as he moves his gaze back over to Natalie.

"Told Will that I don't know how you do this job sometimes," he informs her, and Natalie's early surprise mounts for a moment. Appears on her face as her eyes widen and her mouth parts with a question that Jay's continued rambling keeps her from asking. "When I put in my transfer paperwork last year, there was an opening in special victims, but-"

His voice trails off in a heavy sigh, and Natalie instinctively reaches out to squeeze his arm. Leans across the counter so her belly bumps up against the wall, so she has to take a step back and press her hand against her side as the baby protests the jostling he's been subjected to. And for the first time in the past thirty minutes, the smile she offers Jay and the concern look written across his face isn't forced.

"Your nephew is protesting being woken up from his nap," she informs him, and her smile widens when the corner of Jay's lips twitch upward.

"His namesake was the same way. Will and I used to see who would dare to get the closest to Grandpa and his hammock," he replies. There's a wistful tone, a happy tone to Jay's voice that Natalie can't even remember the last time she heard, and she finds herself hoping that Owen will grow up to use a similar tone of voice when talking about summers with his younger brother despite the large age gap between them.

"So Will talked to you, then? About what he wants to name the baby?"

She tacks on the second question because she already knows the answer to the first. Already knows that Will and Jay talked and that one or both of them said something to piss of the other off given the way Will is obviously avoiding Jay and the way Jay's eyes darken when she mentions his brother.

"Yeah, Samuel. Much better than Herbert," Jay replies pulling a face over his other grandfather's name. Will had pulled the same exact face when Natalie had asked him to rattle off names from his side of the family that they could possibly use, and Natalie appreciates the peek at the similar mannerism her husband and her brother-in-law share even if she knows neither of them would appreciate her pointing it out right now.

"Samuel Jay," Natalie corrects tacking on the middle name that Will had been adamant they use. He had asked for that almost as soon as they found out the baby was a boy. Cornered her in the doctor's lounge one morning in between shifts - him coming off a night shift, her working a day shift, and Owen waiting out in the car with Helen to be dropped off at school - to tell her that he'd been thinking, which was never a good sign.

Except this thought was a good one, and Natalie's clung to Will's unwavering position of their son's middle name as a sign that he wants fix whatever has soured between him and his brother. That he still wants Jay to stand up next to them and Father Brady as their son's godfather while the baby is baptized into a faith that Natalie and even Will don't fully believe in.

"You don't have to do that, Nat," Jay informs her after a moment breaking up the sounds of a busy emergency department that have filled the void of silence between them.

"Wasn't my idea," she asserts. Her brother-in-law is difficult to read at times - the same military training Jeff went through helping him to cover up his emotions - but she can tell by the way he moves his fingers up to rub against the hairline of his forehead that she's hit a note with him. That he realizes what she's trying to tell him and trying to process it before she even has the chance to get the words out. "I wanted to name him Michael, but Will was pretty adamant that we name the baby after the best guy he knows."

"Then maybe he should stop telling me to leave Erin because she has cancer. Because we probably won't have kids as a result. Pretty sure doing that would mean I'm a real dick."

She had hoped that Will questioning why Jay had been a one-off. Something Will inserted into a larger conversation about experimental trials and drugs he wanted to put his standing at this hospital and his medical license and Erin's health on the line in order to make it all better. Make the cancer and the way it's upended his brother's life go away so he can be the hero, so they can all go back to a life where he and Jay get into brotherly spats about about the stupidest of things.

But there was a part of her that knew exactly what her husband was running his mouth off about. Knew from Erin's frustratingly vague references to New York and the way that Will kept refusing to talk to her about whatever was going on between him and Jay that something bigger was amiss. Something that makes Natalie's heart to sink to the pit of her stomach now.

Sink so far and so fast that the baby starts kicking up a storm in response, that Natalie presses the back of her hand to forehead as she takes a steady breath. And she can feel the heat of Jay's gaze shift as his emotions morph from anger to concern; her own emotions moving in the opposite direction from his as she starts to reflect on what Will's fixation on Jay leaving Erin means for their relationship. Because even if Jay and Erin haven't said those vows - for better and for worse, in sickness and in health - she and Will have.

"Nat!" Maggie's voice cries out from the other end of the ED, and Natalie's attention is pulled from the look on her brother-in-law's face to that of the woman who actually runs Med's emergency department. "Motor vehicle accident. Three minutes out."

The brunette nods her head - ponytail bouncing with the force of her motion - in acknowledgement of Maggie's announcement, and she sidesteps around the counter. Moves to bypass her brother-in-law so she can grab gloves and meet the gurney at the door, but something - the general slowness of her gait, the swift kick of the baby, the look on her brother-in-law's fast as Will goes rushing past them - causes her to stop dead in her tracks.

"Yeah, doing that would make you a dick," Natalie agrees lifting her gaze upward to look Jay directly in the eye and reaching out with one hand to touch his arm one more time. "And I know you're not that guy. Know you care a lot about Erin. So, please, don't take advice from your brother. You and I both know he's not great at relationships."

"True," Jay agrees. The upward twitch of his lips tells Natalie that he likely knows more than her - more than Zoe the pharmaceutical rep and Naomi from Doctors Without Borders and Krystal from accounting and Natalie the doctor whose pigtails he pulled while she was still grieving for her husband - but Jay's also never lied to her so she believes him when he adds, "But I know he tries really hard with you and Owen and Sammy."

"Ugh," Natalie replies wrinkling her nose. She hates that nickname and told Will that it was off the table back when they were still debating between Samuel or Michael as the baby's name, but the flash of the ambulance lights reflecting on the walls of the ED's waiting room means she doesn't have time to share that tidbit of information with her brother-in-law.

Not if she wants to meet the gurney at the door; not if she wants to have time to put her husband - the ginger standing over by the door pretending that he isn't stealing glances at her and Jay - on alert that she needs to talk to him the next time they both catch a break. Because the relationship her husband needs to be trying harder on is the one with his brother before the fallout from that starts to impact the one between the two of them more than it already has.


	7. Part Seven

The sliver of light cast across the cracked concrete floor of the basement from the open dryer door flickers each time he sticks his hand inside to pull out another handful of clothes. The slight dampness of the fabric is a sure sign that Erin overloaded the dryer; the lack of heat radiating from the dryer is a sure sign that it's be a couple of hours since anyone has been down here.

He had meant to come down here once Erin nodded off. Knew the dryer was on its last legs from all the work its been putting in these past few months and didn't Erin shoving four pairs of jeans, two hoodies, and a ratty old sweatshirt from back when she was in the academy into a single load. But he had fallen asleep soon after the movie started and it was too late now - the sun already starting to peek through the small, basement windows in a reminder that he needs to get down to the district soon and the dryer refusing to restart no matter how hard he pushes on the start button.

So Voight settles for scooping Halstead's still damp clothes and dumping them into the basket Erin left sitting atop the dryer. Doesn't want to come home from the district with clothes that need to be washed stat and find that Halstead's have mildewed in his dryer because Erin forgot about them. Doesn't want to be forced to dry his skivvies in with Halstead's or listen to Erin and Jay snip about her being messy and him having a stick up his ass when it comes to the way his shirts get folded.

Not that there seem to be any in this load. An observation Hank wishes he wasn't making because he doesn't like to think about Halstead going commando as he sits around his house or listens to the rest of the unit get him up to speed on a case in the bullpen after he slinks in late. Doesn't want to think about Halstead squirming because of something other than Voight's disapproving glare or, worse, wearing the same pair of skivvies over and over again. Shut that shit down with Justin when he was ten, and doesn't need to be having that conversation with his thirty-seven year old employee.

The two of them have already had enough uncomfortable talks to last Voight a lifetime. Conversations about Halstead needing to keep in his pants giving way to demands that he have Erin's back twenty-four seven and then less than subtle reminders that the two of them weren't being straight with him. Not recognizing that, as their boss, he deserved to know which one would be bouncing from the unit and, as Erin's father, he deserved to know a date.

He hadn't counted on the conversations that were to follow when Erin announced there wouldn't be a date, when she sat at her desk pretending of the rest of her unit that her head was on straight while Halstead made those dejected puppy faces at her. When Halstead found out and then refused to leave; parked his ass in a corner of the doctor's office while Erin's surgeon talked about milk ducts and nipple tattoos and if she wanted to talk to a specialist about freezing eggs fertilized with Halstead's sperm.

He shouldn't have been there for that conversation. Needed to be there solely for the ones pertaining to Erin's immediate health - the day of her surgery, the recovery plan, the amount of chemotherapy and radiation she'd likely need - and to meet her oncologist. To make sure this guy was above the board in a way that Camille's hadn't been.

But he also knew his girl, knew that Erin would twist this bad news into a reflection of her own self-worth and a sign that she deserves to be alone, and it was clear that Halstead picked up on this trait of hers, too, given that every single appointment at Med involved the two of them sitting in hard, plastic chairs with Erin sandwiched between them while the doctors droned on and on about Erin's options. Halstead asking questions and sussing out the pros and cons; Voight reaching out to squeeze Erin's shoulder when she started to get that look in her eye.

That look he and Camille both tried to rid her of by bringing her into this house, by buying her a dress to counteract the displays of sexuality a girl her age didn't need to be engaged in, and by promising they would always be honest with her - the good, the bad, or the ugly - so she could learn there were at least two people in this world she could trust.

Voight hadn't kept up with promise when things got really ugly. When Justin went off the rails after Camille died and he went off the rails trying to protect his son. Really went off the rails after Justin got himself straightened out only for the two of them to find his son - Erin's brother - in the back of Justin's SUV. And Erin hadn't always been straight with him. Not after Nadia died; not after Bunny came crawling back into her life to prey upon Erin's guilt and pain.

But she had been straight with him about the other cancer in her life - let him in on that long before she went under the knife. And she had been straight with him last night about why she refused the meds offered to her, why she'd rather let her body be riddled with pain than let this become a banana peel for her.

Still isn't being straight about what she was doing with Halstead, though. A fact that irks him as he pulls a fistful of damp boxer-briefs out of the dryer and dumps them into the basket. As he roots around making sure he got all of Halstead's clothes out before letting the door slam shut and the singular light in the room diminish.

And he runs his hand down the front of his face as his eyes adjust to the sudden darkness, as he takes a moment to remind himself that he told Halstead a long time ago that he didn't care to know about the status of his and Erin's relationship. But that was before Erin started in with those stupid happy grins at Molly's, before his son died, before Halstead went and proposed, before Erin's engagement ring ended up being the second one he locked up in the safe down here.

Camille's ring had come back to him two years ago; his daughter-in-law trying to be straight with him about the good and the bad and the ugly. Explaining that she loved Justin and always would, but that she had met someone and didn't feel right about holding onto a family heirloom with another man's ring on her finger. That she and Daniel were moving down to St. Louis to be closer to her new husband's family, but that she's committed to making sure Danny knows his grandpa and his Aunt Erin. That she'd send pictures and FaceTime and bring Hank's only grandchild up for visits.

He understood - a twenty-something single mother couldn't be expected to turn into a monk the way he had after Camille died - but her move and the return of that ring - a ring he promised to hold onto for Daniel when he got old enough - meant his family unit shrunk down to just him and Erin. Alvin. The guys over at the social club. Halstead.

Maybe.

After all, the guy's ring was nestled in the back of that safe next to the one Hank bought for Camille because Erin refused to wear it and Halstead refused to take it back. Left it sitting on Erin's coffee table for anyone - a paramedic helping to haul her out of the shower, a particularly dumb criminal who chose to burglarizing a cop's place - to swipe. And so Hank had swiped it telling Halstead and Erin both that it would be in the safe in the basement when either of them wanted it.

But neither of them seemed to want it. Halstead never mentioned it, and last night was about the closest Erin ever came to mentioning when she pointedly asked if he took anything out of the safe recently. And so the ring just sits there while Erin deals with both the toxins being pumped into her body and her demons. While Halstead overextends himself working two jobs and trying to be at every appointment. While Voight tries not to think about how life made it so Erin's really the last person he's got and now might take her, too, as he pushes Halstead's damp skivvies to the bottom of the basket. Tries not to think about how if Erin's not careful, if she and Halstead don't start being straight with one another, she might end up with just Hank in her life.

A fear of his that Camille had once put to rest - at least, for the entire time Camille was with them - when she bought Erin that dress for Christmas. A fear of his that Halstead had once started to abate when he showed up on Voight's doorstep asking to talk and then wordlessly placed on small, square blue box on the kitchen counter. Floorboards creaking as Halstead shifted his weight while Voight crossed his arms across his chest and waited for his detective to give him an update as to the status of his and Erin's relationship.

Those same floorboards creak over his head - a sure sign that Erin has moved from her spot on the couch - as Voight still waits on an update as to the status of Halstead and Lindsay's relationship. The floorboards creak again as Erin moves from the living room to the kitchen while Voight moves in the opposite direction under her feet from the dryer to the shelving unit at the back of the basement. His opening of the safe echoing the sound of her opening the cabinet; his fingers curling around the ring box at the same time hers touch one of the glasses on the shelf.

The floorboards don't creak before he hears the curse word fall from her lips - a clue this basement was never as soundproof as he and Camille thought it was during all their marital spats - but he knows immediately that yet another drinking glass has shattered against the linoleum floor of his kitchen. Grunts in disapproval as he swings the door of the safe shut and then again when he hears the floorboards creaking as he slides the rolling shelving unit back into place.

"Leave it, Erin," Hank calls out before hoisting up the overflowing basket of clothes to his hip with one hand. Last thing he needs is Erin cutting herself on a piece of glass and tracking blood all over his kitchen as she tries to mop it up. Tires herself out and fucks up her wrists for the rest of the day because she's too damn stubborn and embarrassed to ask for help.

"Thought I told you to use the plastic cups," he reminds her as he reaches the top of the stairs and pushes open the ajar door to the basement to find her seated on one of the low bar stools by the kitchen table. Her eyes narrow at the suggestion as he drops the laundry basket on the table in front of her and moves over to the cabinet where the cleaning supplies and dust broom are kept.

It takes her a moment to slide her hands out from the fabric of her oversize sweatshirt, and Hank can't help but grunt in disapproval because it's no wonder she's dropping glasses if she's trying to grab them with six inches of fabric between her fingers and the glass. Grunts again when he hears Erin very disapprovingly informs him that the clothes are still damp.

"How many times I gotta tell you not put more than two pairs of jeans in there at one time?" He points out to her, and he doesn't need to look over his shoulder to know that she's likely shooting dagger eyes at him from under the black beanie she's pulled on to keep warm this morning. Typical Erin insolence when something she already knows is pointed out to her again; typical Erin insolence that he's glad to see for once and takes as a sign that the pain pills are helping. That forcing them on her last night was a good idea, after all.

"You could get a new dryer," Erin informs him as he pulls the dustpan and broom from the cabinet, and it appears that her mouth sores are no longer bothering her as she points out that his dryer is nearly as old as she is. That its almond coloring was popular back in the 1980s, and it takes twice as long to run as the dryer at her place does.

"Halstead's welcome to wash his clothes over there," Hank replies in a flat, monotone voice before crouching down to sweep up the shards of glass that have scattered every which way across his kitchen floor. There's no rebuttal on Erin's part as he works, and he's just about cleaned up all the glass when he hears the scrape of the barstool as she shifts her position followed by her gravelly voice breaking with emotion.

"Hank," she nearly whispers, and his head snaps up immediately. His gaze shifting from searching out the minuscule glass shards on the floor to catch the pained look that flashes across her face before it is quickly replaced with one of anger. Before she drops the ring box in her hand back into the basket where it silently lands amongst Halstead's boxer-briefs and blue jeans and and glares at him.

"I didn't ask you to get that out of the safe," she hisses at him and, for a second, she looks like that insolent fifteen-year-old he brought home. All salt and vinegar with a brave face that's far too grown up for such a knobby kneed, little girl.

She's still salt and vinegar despite the effect that chemo and surgery and those demons on her head have had on her, and she's still his little girl despite the fact that she turned thirty-five on her most recent birthday. Still someone who needs a little nudge every once in awhile, a reminder that she can't let the bad news lobbed at her keep her down in the muck.

And he'll give her that reminder because that's what she did for him after he got out of prison, after Justin died, after Olive and his grandson moved down to southern Illinois. Because he's seen how depression can be cancer's cohort and how she pushes everyone away when she's in pain and he doesn't want that for her.

"Halstead's off shift in a hour or so," Voight informs her glancing over to the clock on the stove to confirm. "Know he's likely gonna swing by here and check in on you."

If he was beating down at the club, no one would be dumb enough to wager against him that Jay won't show up as soon as he clocks out at Med, and Erin smartly keeps her mouth shut. Doesn't put up some front about how Jay might not swing by, how he won't be catching a quick catnap in her bed before he rolls up at the district and drowns a whole pot of coffee.

"He can take that," Hank says with a nod towards ring box nestled in the basket of clothes, "and his clean clothes back to his place, or you two can figure out how it can stay here. But I don't want that in my safe."

"Gotta enough crap in there," he adds after a moment thinking about the paperwork - birth certificates, death certificates, marriage licenses, certificate of stillbirth, unfilled adoption papers because Bunny came back and then Erin aged out - he's got stacked in there along with a couple of grand in cash and the money Camille saved up for Erin's wedding. Doesn't need to be adding Erin's string of broken hearts in there, too.

"You don't get to dictate the status of Jay's and my relationship," Erin snaps at him, but Hank just holds her gaze. Catches a glimpse of that little girl who's still pushing people away to save herself from getting hurt that encourages him to break his rule, to insert himself into a relationship that he wasn't that enthused about in the first place.

Not until, that is, he saw how Erin pulled herself out of that hole she was digging five years ago for Jay. How Halstead was the one to keep her upright and healthy after Hank fell into his own hole. How Erin came out of surgery and only relaxed, only smiled when Halstead brushed his fingers against her cheek. How Halstead has shown up every single day even after Erin tried to let him off the hook and push him away.

"No," Hank grunts out after dumping the shards of glass into the trashcan under the sink, after returning the broom and the dustpan to their proper places in the cabinet. "But-"

"But what?" Erin questions angrily as he crosses the kitchen to stand next to her. If she was healthy, if her wrists were bothering her, he thinks that she might have pushed him away when he reached out to touch her shoulder. Likely would have run off and slam the door to her bedroom, if she was sixteen. "Your house, your rules?"

But she's none of those things and, instead, she merely glares at him as he gently squeezes her shoulder. Taking care to avoid the chemo port buried beneath her skin just inches down from where his palm curls against her shoulder as he tries to get to understand to he knows that she's scared. That she's hurting. That she thinks Halstead should get out now before things get any worse. Grumbles something along those lines at her until her gaze starts to soften and shift away from his. Still so embarrassed that her father can read her so well.

"Halstead's stuck around through a lot of shit that would scare other guys off. Think he deserves to know where your head's at with this engagement. If he's been added to your string of broken hearts," Voight says watching as Erin's features harden again at his last statement. But Hank's been privy to a lot of proverbial pebbles being lobbed at her window since she - and Halstead - moved back in, and he gently squeezes her shoulder one more time. "Think my daughter deserves to know where he's head is at, too. If he's sticking around out of duty, or because he wants whatever time and future he can have with her."


	8. Part Eight

**Author's Note:** Apologies for the severe delay in updating. I tried to get back into the mindset needed to finish this fic; I'm not sure if I've been successful. Either way, I appreciate you reading the update and sharing your thoughts after all these months of waiting.

* * *

He can tell the kale has become lodged against the roof of her mouth by the way her jaw clenches. Her left cheek bulges as she slides her tongue around, her eyebrows as she tries to dislodge the particle of food, and her hand stops piling the assortment of healthy vegetables onto the end of her fork. Instead, she starts pushing the fork aimlessly around the plastic container and glancing over at the half-eaten sausage, egg, and English muffin held in his right hand.

"Sure you don't want me to get you one?" He asks tilting his head over towards the food truck parked down the street from where they sit. A line has begun to form as the hospital's support staff – the custodians, the orderlies, the security guards – change shifts, but he's more than willing to stand in line for her. To save his unborn son from being subjected to the kale, arugula, and beets concoction that Helen cooked up for Natalie to eat during her breaks as a gesture of goodwill after her less than enthusiastic reaction to learning her grandson would soon have a half-sibling.

"No," she replies in a tone that, to him, feels slightly icier than the temperature they're being subjected to as they enjoy their breakfast on a bench outside the ambulance bay. "This is good for him. Brain food."

"You don't really believe that, do you?" He questions as he glances from the plastic container in her hand to watch her grimace as she jams the fork into her mouth. As she smacks her jaw and looks a hell of a lot like the cows he used to see on those long drives up to his grandfather's cabin in Wisconsin. Not that he'd ever tell her that. Especially since he's still clearly on her bad side, still hasn't managed to win her over with all his attempts to talk to his brother today.

"Hmm," Natalie replies as she tries to swallow the vegetables down, "can't hurt to try to give him a few more brain cells so he can think before he speaks."

The comment stings even though he knows she's got a point, knows that he hasn't exactly been in her good graces since Jay told her that he told his brother to leave Erin. Which isn't at all what he meant – something Jay should know given the way their dad treated their mom after her diagnosis – even if that's actually how the words came out. Even if that is another example of how Will needs to learn not to stick his foot in his mouth.

And her words dig at the thoughts and worries he's kept buried that something will go wrong. That he'll manage to screw all this up. That Owen is so wonderful and perfect and amazing because he wasn't really around enough early on to mess him up. That Natalie was right to push him away five years ago. That all the work he's done to be a better doctor and a better boyfriend and a better brother and a better man doesn't matter because he still manages to step into at every turn.

And, suddenly, the taste of the breakfast sandwich has soured in his mouth. The look of it in his hand – the paper wrapper pressed up against the gold band on his finger – looks utterly unappetizing, and his gaze shifts to look away from it as his arm falls down to his side. There's a trashcan just past the entrance to the hospital, and he mumbles something about throwing away their trash and getting back to work when he feels Natalie's hand brush against his, when he glances down and sees her hungrily eyeing the half-eaten sandwich in his hand.

"Here," he offers thrusting the sandwich towards her before she can make up some lie about only wanting the sandwich because it's a waste to throw away good food. And he can't help but bark out a laugh as she eagerly takes the sandwich in her hands, as she shoves nearly a quarter of the sandwich into her mouth in one bite and lets out a moan of pleasure.

"I'll get some napkins," Will tells her as some of the bacon fat dribbles down her chin and she moves to wipe it away with the back of her hand. She gives him an appreciative nod, crams another bite into her mouth as he walks away towards the food truck.

His hand immediately slides into the pocket of his coat; his fingers grasping around the ten dollar bill and assorted change he shoved in there after his first loop through the line in front of the food truck as he settles on buying her another sandwich. But his elbow remains bent and locked against his side when the sliding doors of Chicago Med's entrance open, when a man with those same features that stare back at Will in the mirror every morning steps out into the open-air walkway.

Will's feet falter in their steps forward as those eyes that glazed over while making a hasty exit from the cafeteria, that hardened while standing outside the room of Natalie's patient for nearly three hours meet his. And those eyes that Jay so clearly inherited from their mother are quick to dismiss him, to look anywhere but at him as Jay moves past him and towards where Natalie sits near the pedestrian entrance to the employee parking lot.

He considers letting his brother go, letting their words – spoken and unspoken – fester in the space between them, and letting himself continue to be the coward he knows Jay has always considered him to be. The flakey guy who runs at the first sign of commitment; the older brother who'd rather not rock the boat and the good thing he's got going with their dad.

But he's not that guy again. Not since someone detonated a bomb in the middle of the emergency department back in 2015. Not since Natalie agreed to marry him. And he ends up following after Jay, reaching out to grab his little brother's arm in an effort to make him stay and listen to him so the two of them can get it all out in the open.

It's probably not the smartest idea to grab someone in the CPD who used to serve in the Army. Not with the way Jay's arm muscles flex under Will's grip or the way his hand immediately moves into a defensive stance. And, for a brief, moment Will wonders if Jay is going to hit him. If he's going to end up spending the rest of his shift in the doctor's lounge with an icepack over his eye and Goodwin telling him to leave his personal problems at the door. But, despite the threat, Will's hand remains clamped on his brother's arm, and he refuses to look away when Jay's gaze snaps to him.

"I'm not like Dad. I'm not," Will hisses out. His voice is low and terse – an effort to keep his private life somewhat private from the colleagues milling – but he knows Jay can hear him because his younger brother's eyes harden in response. Because Jay's features twist into that look of disbelief and displeasure their mom used to give him when he'd make fun of eight-year-old Jay for wetting the bed, when he'd tell her that Dad was at his baseball games rather than the truth about where the old man went on Thursday nights.

"I know I used to be. I know that you don't believe I've changed because of how things went down with Nina and Natalie. I know I let you down all your life and that I wasn't there when you needed me most," he continues yet the terseness of his voice breaks as the memories creep in. As he remembers getting a call from the owner of the restaurant and mini-mart up by Grandpa Sam's cabin expressing sympathy for the Halstead family's loss before explaining that Jay had stopped by and near cleaned the mini-mart out of alcohol. That he'd been seen popping pills in his truck between rounds at the local gun range and seemed to be taking his anger out on the few who call remote, northern Wisconsin home year round.

And Will hadn't been able – or, more accurately, willing – to deal with that. Had abandoned his brother and told himself it was because Jay had abandoned their family by joining the Army; had only called him up after Will learned from the Canaryville gossip mill after the sister of an old high school friend had looked him up in New York City that his brother had joined the Chicago police force and seemed to be doing well from himself. Wasn't going to services at St. Gabriel's, but how many people their age from the area really were?

"But I'm not Dad," Will asserts. "And I would never want you to treat Erin the way Dad treated Mom. I'd help her bury your body up in Wisconsin, if you even tried."

The promise – or, more accurately, the poor attempt at a joke – seems to fall flat because Jay's gaze remains resolute as he tries to yank his arm from Will's grasp. The effort on Jay's part is pretty feeble, though, because Will knows his brother could shake him off, if he really wanted to. Could have him pinned up against the wall faster than Will ever managed when they were kids. And Will takes it as a sign to keep going, to try to extract his foot from his mouth once and for all.

"All I want is for you to think this through," Will informs him. Those standing around the entrance to the hospital are staring now, and Will only has to tilt his head a fraction to the right to see Natalie cautiously watching them. Her hand is pressed against the side of her stomach; her brows are furrowed in concern. But the sight barely registers because Will's heartbeat is pounding away in his head along with the memories of what losing Mom did to their family. With the memory of watching his brother's world crumble once more on the night Erin showed up, shoved her engagement ring in Jay's hand, and told him that she didn't want to be with him anymore.

"Because I know what happened to you when we lost Mom and I saw what happened when Erin ended things and if she...if she…" Will trails off because, for all his training as a doctor and all his experience being the one to break bad news, he can't bring himself to finish the sentence. To watch his brother try to push the pain in his eyes back behind the wall of stoicism that life with their dad and in the Army built inside him. "I don't want to watch you go through that again."

"I won't," Jay immediately hisses back, and Will nods his head because he hopes his brother is right. He hopes that in a year or two or twenty, he's still wondering how his dorky little brother managed to end up someone as hot and as cool as Erin Lindsay. But he's been through this enough with his patients and with his own family to know that life doesn't go the way you want.

That his brother could wake up in a year or two or twenty and realize he missed out trying to make up for the sins of their father with his own son. That the women he hopes will one day be his sister-in-law doesn't deserve that animosity in her life. Not after this uphill battle.

And that's all he wants his brother to think through, to consider the long-term ramifications of what will hopefully be a short-term problem. Because, thankfully, Jay's not like the way Will used to be or the way their father largely still is. He's the kind of guy who never gets far when he tries to run, who puts others before himself, who has been dealt shitty hand after shitty hand and still manages to be the best guy that Will knows. To be the kind of guy that Will hopes Samuel one day sees him as.


	9. Part Nine

Her wrists scream at her as she presses her fingers down against the collar of his plaid button-up, and her teeth catch the corner of her lip as she bites down hard to keep from screaming out. There are four more shirts - two which he'll probably say shrunk because they weren't hung up to dry or put in the dryer on the tumble dry low setting - and one pair of jeans in the basket to go, and she's determined to finish this chore.

Even if it leaves her in pain for the rest of the day. Even if she gets stuck rewatching scenes from "The Americans" because she doesn't have the strength to jab down on the buttons. Even if it means she has to endure those subtle scowls as he straightens the collar of his button downs and picks at the creases in his Henleys because, after five years, her folding skills still aren't up to snuff.

If this was a year ago, two years ago, she'd leave the cleaning to him and his ridiculously high white glove standards. She'd tell him that he's lucky she left his stuff in the basket instead of shoving it in a drawer or, she's pitch up one eyebrow and tell him that can stop when he complains about her leaving discarded tank tops and bras on the floor.

Except it's not two years ago or, even, a year ago, and so she carefully adds the newly folded shirt to the pile at her right and moves to yank the blue plaid shirt out of the basket on the table in front of her. Tries to ignore the little black box sitting to the left of the basket. Fails because that little black box is all her mind can focus on when it should be trying to remember if the right sleeve folds under the left.

The fabric once warm from the dryer has returned to room temperature, and it falls listlessly onto the table when the pain in her wrist seizes her up so badly that her fingers unfurl their grip around the left sleeve. She falls backwards, too, and the stool wobbly beneath her as she presses the her wrist into her chest, as she tries to blink back the tears of frustration gathering in her eyes.

One or two of them manages to fall; dark, wet stains spreading across the fabric of the hoodie she's wrapped herself up in. The wet spots growing larger when her teeth snag on one of the canker sores doting the lower lip of her mouth, when her stomach revolts at the metallic taste of blood filling her mouth. And she grasps blindly for the plastic cup of water on the table even though she knows it is stupid and idiotic to think that water might help.

The cup, of course, tips over because her wrist can't stand supporting her grip, and she grimaces at the reminder that Hank was right to buy a set of four plastic cups with palm trees painted on the side. Grimaces at the way the water spreads across the table soaking the newly dried, blue plaid in front of her and lapping at the stack of clothes she just spent the last hour neatly folding and cascading over the side of the table.

The splash becomes an audible plop after a minute or two; the stream of water slowing to a trickle over the side of the table. Yet the encroaching silence is pushed back by the crunch of leaves outside the kitchen window, and she knows it is him even before she turns her head and spies brown hair and broad shoulders moving towards the back door. Knows it is him because he stomps his boots against the back porch as though in warning, as though to preemptively tell Hank to put down the shotgun.

An announcement that isn't really needed because the key turning in the look was given to him by Hank, because those with keys are free to come and go at their leisure without having a shotgun pointed at them through the door. Usually. If they don't forget their keys.

She also knows it is him because he's the only one who parks in the alley - the look of horror on his face when she told him to take Hank's spot out front one day nearly three years ago still etched in her memory - and, therefore, the only one who regularly enters the house through the back door. And her grimace deepens into a frown when she realizes he'll walk right into another mess, come home to find he has to spend the few moments he has before his shift back on his hands and knees cleaning up after her.

"Hey," his voice softly calls out to her as the door swings open, and she forces herself to tear her gaze away from the mess in front of her to look at him. To catch the small, gentle smile on his lips as drops his keys on the counter - a pet peeve of Hank's - and bends down to start removing his boots.

The gray, long-sleeve shirt and the non-star shaped badge of his security guard uniform peeks out through the unzipped portion of his coat, and the sight of it robs her face of the smile that appeared in response to smile he offered her. Forces her to consider how many sacrifices she's demanded of him and continues to demand of him; forces her to consider how he's donned green and blue and, now, gray because his sense of morality and loyalty won't let him do anything else.

"There's, uh, water on the floor so-" she mumbles pointing with a nod of her head as her voice trails off. The silent nod of his head, the way he leaves the laces of his boots alone in favor of retrieving the roll of paper towels from the counter besides the sink causes her frown to deepen.

He doesn't make jokes about her being a messy person anymore. He doesn't grow exasperated with his constant role as clean up crew. He merely grabs the roll of paper towels and waits for her to instruct him on where to clean up after her.

"Don't," she hisses, and his eyebrows pitch upward in surprise as he freezes mid-step towards her. As he clutches the paper towels in his hand and silently questions with his eyes as to why she doesn't want him to come any closer. "I can clean up after myself."

"Erin," he starts, and she shakes her head side to side. The beanie slips downward; her hair no longer there to help keep it in place. And the dip of the fabric over her eyes gives her an opportunity to avoid his gaze as she tells him to leave it because it's just water. Because she can't bear to see him on hands and knees right now.

The latter reason remains unspoken yet somehow he seems to understand because the stool opposite her is pulled out from under the table with a loud screech. Because there's a small splash as his left boot steps into the puddle of water and a light thud as the paper towels join the motley crew of items on the table before him.

"Please tell me Voight didn't fold my briefs," Jay eventually interjects, and the horrified tone of his voice causes her to tip back her head. To let the beanie slip backwards so she can see the wide eyed look on his face as he stares at the stack of neatly rolled boxer briefs on the table.

The way he rolls his briefs and his socks are a holdover from his Army days when everything had to be crammed into a backpack. A tip he shared with her one night when she was complaining about not having enough drawer space; a tip he promptly forgot when she held up one of those outfits of hers he loves so much and asked how he'd roll it with military precision.

"No," Erin replies before explaining that Hank put everything in the dryer, but she was the one who touched his skivvies long enough to roll them. She doesn't miss the way his gaze darts down in an attempt to examine her wrists; his silent assessment thwarted by the laundry basket between them.

But he's smart enough to keep his mouth shut, to snap his eyes back up to her face as he nods his head and tells her thank you. And she merely shrugs her shoulders in reply, although the pain in her wrists continues to radiate, because folding his laundry shouldn't be a big deal. Should be such a normal task that it goes unnoticed and unappreciated.

"I'm going to make something to eat. You want anything?" He asks as he begins to gingerly place the neatly rolled briefs into the laundry basket. "Eggs? Toast? I think there's still a melon in the fridge that I could cut-"

His list of food options would normally turn her stomach, would have her shaking her head too afraid to open her mouth lest she can't keep the bile from rising up in her throat. But it is the look on his face and - following a quick dip of her eyes down to the table top - the confirmation of what he's looking at that turns her stomach this morning. That has her trying to swallow back the bile and the emotions as he dejectedly drops the pair of boxer briefs in his hand.

There's a long, pregnant pause where she waits for him to pick up the box. To slip it into the pocket of his red-lined coat so they can pretend the box was never there. To push it back across the table towards her and let his heart dictate when his brain should know better.

Or, maybe, he's waiting for her to do so. To slip it into the pocket of her hoodie so they can pretend the box was never there. To press it in his hand and let her brain - which knows she can never escape the bad news, which knows it's the people who she cares about most who end up getting hurt - dictate what her heart can't seem to understand.

"You still holding out for fireworks on Mackinac Island?"

The joke causes her eyelids to slam shut; the corners of her eyes furrowing up in wrinkles as she tries to figure out how to respond. How to take in the fact that he's sitting across from her defaulting to jokes about some stupid undercover op she came up with so many years ago as the bottom lids of his eyes turn red with tears he won't shed.

She hadn't expected to have this conversation so soon, and her anger over Hank bringing this up out of the basement safe without permission to do so amplifies. Because she didn't ask him to do this. Didn't ask him to put her in the situation of returning a ring to a guy she loves. Again.

It was easier to dance around the question of why she's not wearing the ring on her finger or on a chain around her neck when it was down in the safe. Out of sight, out of mind.

Except, it was never out of mind. Not really. Not when she was moved from post-op to recovery and saw those same misty, red eyes staring at her. Not when she kissed him - stupidly, with vomit still on her breath - as he sat on the floor of the bathroom of what was formerly their apartment with her after her first round of chemo. Not when she decided too late that she should get out of the shower and call him on the night she smashed her head against the corner of the bathtub.

She's never needed or wanted fireworks and a room at the Grand Hotel. Sort of likes how he had to pull her out of the break room and show her that he wasn't joking or making some inane, spur of the moment decision by popping open the glove box and letting her see the black, velvet box nestled amid extra accident reports and insurance documents. Sort of likes how her first thought - even as her heartbeat thudded in her ears - was that he was an idiot for leaving an engagement ring in the glove box of their work vehicle and how he made her laugh as he explained with an evident "duh" in his voice that a police vehicle where she rarely rides shotgun was the safest place he could think of.

What she doesn't like is that she's subjected him to another round of bad news - first, his mom then his brothers in arms and now her. That the strong sense of morality and loyalty she's always loved about him has now become a weapon that she - intentionally or unintentionally - is using against him to keep him that bad news.

"Jay, you deserve-"

"Don't," he cuts in echoing the tone and forcefulness she used a mere moments ago, and his head snaps up to lock eyes with her. "I'm tired of everyone - you, Voight, Will - telling me what I do and don't deserve or that I should think about what I want."

"You should," Erin interjects because it's true. Because he needs to take a minute to consider how the severity of her diagnosis will upend his life. How, most days, she feels like she'll be lucky to make it out alive let alone make it back onto the force. Let alone achieve those dreams of a family - the kind neither of them really got to have - that she never let herself have before Hank and Camille took her in or before she met him. The dreams she won't let herself dwell on in the face of the shitty hand and the constant bad news she's been dealt over the past couple of months.

"There's nothing to think about," he retorts, and she finds herself glancing down to the puddle of water on the table so she doesn't have to see the tears gathering in his eyes. See the same look of frustration and hurt and anger he gave her when he discovered why she returned the ring. The look that caused her to crumple in her resolve to save him from herself once before. "I want the same thing I wanted last year, two years ago, five years ago - you and me."

"Jay," she starts, but she can't bring herself to vocalize the truth. Not when she already knows he knows it. Not when she's caught him counting heartbeats on the worst nights. The ones where she lets down her guard and twists her aching, sick body around his so they can both fit in the twin bed that Hank still refuses to upgrade to a full or a queen.

And so it falls on him to vocalize it, to tell her that he spoke to his brother today for the first time in several weeks and learned that Will's concerned about the what ifs. About the parallels between her and their mom or between her and Camille and the impact that's going on have on his life. And his voice grows tighter and smaller, becomes a coil around her heart when he finally looks up at her and lets her sees the tears spilling out of his eyes.

"I love you, and I don't want to, uh, guilt you into letting me stay or-," he chokes out. "If you really want me to go-"

He stops talking because he doesn't know how to finish that sentence, or maybe he stops because she's shaking her head. Because her heart is screaming for relief louder than her wrists ever have.

"I don't want you to stay because you feel guilty," she confesses after a long pause. "If I survive this -"

"When," he immediately interjects, and she sighs because he's never been the eternal optimist but he's unrelenting about this point. Which is probably why everyone - his brother, Voight - wants to make sure he gets it. That he's set aside his loyalty and his new found optimism and thought this and all the possible scenarios through.

"If," she stresses once more before pausing again. "My life isn't going to look the way I planned. Your life won't look the way you planned."

"I'll be lucky to make it back on the force," Erin reminds him holding up her wrists. "The chances of me being able to have kids-"

"I never said I wanted kids," he interjects, and she offers him a pointed look in reply because they both know that's not true. That he may not have vocalized wanting them and he may never had scoped out a timeline about having them that made sense with their careers, but that there is a part of him that wants the opportunity to be the kind of dad he never had. And she knows that because there's a part of her that wanted the opportunity to be the kind of mom she never had.

And maybe that's not fair. Maybe that should forever be a sign that they shouldn't have kids. But it is the truth, and she doesn't want them to tiptoe around it.

"You know what future I was thinking of when I proposed?" Jay quietly asks as he turns his gaze to look out the large, picture window besides the kitchen table at the early morning sunrise. "You and me in Wisconsin. Badges and guns locked away. Cell phones turned off. Just the two of us enjoying the peace and the quiet until you get too annoyed with the mosquitos and want to go back to Chicago."

Her brain fights against picturing the scene he's describing, but her heart knows it well enough to fill in the image for her. To add in the details - the bottle of 98.3% DEET next to the sugar canister on the table, for one thing - that he hasn't mentioned. To remember the nice idea he once mentioned to her that her heart has never allowed her to forget.

"I love you," she finds herself reply, and the startled look he gives her when his gaze snaps back to her causes her heart to sink into her chest and the tears gathering in her eyes to spill over. She hates crying in front of him; hates the needy, emotional person she's become over the last few months. "But I was born into bad news and all I ever do is hurt people, and I don't want you to wake up one more and regret-"

"Hey," he replies pushing the laundry basket aside and reaching out to grab the black box sitting on the table in front of them. He holds it up, shakes it slightly as he adds, "You've been dealt a shitty hand, but you are not bad news. Not to me. Not to Hank Voight. And I'm never gonna regret being your partner - at work or at home - no matter what bad news comes next."

The box is dropped on to the table again and slide across with the flick of his wrist so it skitters across the table top and comes to rest in a puddle next to his blue plaid shirt before her. And it takes her only a moment to decide to reach out and pick it up. To fight through the pain in her wrists as she pops it open once more.

The ring is still as beautiful as she remembers. The kind of understated elegance she appreciates because it matches her preference for small amounts of jewelry and slipped under her shirt or her vest without being obvious. Without drawing the attention of the entire district the way they had planned his transfer paperwork one day would. His decision to leave the unit being a public announcement that things between them had advanced forward (or, backwards, if Hank had been the one to initiate the transfer).

Instead, his lingering gaze and her refusal to meet his gaze had been the first announcement that had changed between them. The second coming with her medical leave and his partnerless status. And, now, the opportunity for a third announcement - a more intimate, private one - has fallen onto her shoulders, and she glances up over the rim of the box to look at him. To see the hopefulness he's failing to hide sparkling in his eyes.

"We still have issues we need to work out," she murmurs as his face begins to fall, but he catches himself. Nods as he replies that he knows.

Which she knows is the truth based on the information he and Will have shared about their family, about how mirages were thrown up and bandages were applied because Catholics don't believe in divorce and their father wasn't about to let go of his Norman Rockwell image for the neighbors.

"And you need to work things out with Will," she informs him because she doesn't want to be the one that comes between them. Doesn't want Jay to end up a feeling like Hank did where he's only got one person left in the world.

"He said some stuff today and - " he replies before letting out a sigh. "We'll figure it out."

"Good, because your namesake should get to know you," Erin replies. Nat had told her about the name choice when Erin ran into her Med two weeks ago. Asked if Erin thought it would help patch things up with Will and Jay. And Erin hadn't known what to say then because Jay can carry a grudge when he wants to, but he can also be a sentimental sap when nobody's watching.

Which is exactly why she's unsurprised when he moves to push back his stool and stand once again. Exactly why she quickly plucks out the ring before he take the box from her because she still doesn't want to see him on bended knees in front of her. Still doesn't want anything grander than what he already did for her a year ago.

And, so, she slips the ring on her finger - ignoring the way it's far too big for her bony fingers - and pushes upward on her toes to met his lips. To press her hand against his cheek as he deepens the kiss. To let her hand eventually fall and, ignoring the pain in her wrist, twist it so her fingers can feel his heartbeat thudding under the patch serving as his security guard badge stitched across his shirt against her fingertips.


	10. Epilogue

The jab of a sharp fingernail into his eye jolts him away, but it's the trailing of wet, sticky fingers from closed eyelid down his cheek and across his nose that causes his eyes to fly open. The heavy blanket of sleep being shaken off quickly as his eyes adjust to the darkness of the room; the deadpan look on his face morphing into a smile as those sticky fingers are softly patted against his cheek.

"Boo," he announces with overly exaggerating wide eyes, and the owner of those little fingers reward him with a giggle and another smash of sticky fingers against his cheek. This has become the little boy's favorite game over the past few days, and he's taken to demanding the two of them play it at every turn. Peeking around the porch railing while his father and uncle shoot the breeze, twisting his head around while he eats dinner at the counter in anticipation of being snuck up on, and, now, sneaking into bedrooms trying to get one more round of the game in.

"Jah!" The little boy squeals as he drops back down off his tiptoes and lets his gaze level with the blue sheets covering the mattress. Leaves the man lying in the bad staring at the cowlick of red hair atop the ittle boy's head for the briefest of moments before he pops back up and screams, "Oooh!"

The older man's eyes widen in mock surprise once again, and he rolls slightly backwards onto his shoulder. Throws his hand against his naked chest as though he's clutching his heart while proclaiming that the little boy got him good. That he was so surprised to see the little boy standing there.

It's not a complete lie, the man recons as he reaches over to scoop the little boy up. Merely a reordering of events because was surprised to find the little boy standing beside his bed this morning, surprised that the eighteen-month-old has mastered opening antique doorknobs in the last three days. His admiration of the little boy's skills and intelligence is short lived, though, as he rolls onto his back and notices the door is propped wide open.

There's no way the little boy could have managed that. The time-warped door far too noisy for someone without any practice at being stealthy to be able to push open without him noticing; the river stone used to prop it open far too heavy for someone below the age of five to be able to move into place.

"Who you let you in here? Huh, Sammy?" he questions as he moves to plop the little boy onto the bed beside him. Short, stubby legs rest against the twisted blue sheets and the multicolored quilt for only a moment as the little boy twists his head side to side to survey the new vantage point afforded to him. But the attention span of a goldfish that he inherited from his father eventually kicks in, and Sammy rolls onto his hands, starts inching his way towards the edge of the bed.

"Bye-bye, Jah," the little boy says as he reaches his destination and begins to tip head first over the side of the bed, and any residual sleepiness blanketing his uncle's reflexes are tossed aside in the lightening fast way that Jay's fingers reach out to hook his index finger around the belt loop of the little boy's khaki shorts.

"Oh, no, you don't," Jay replies over the little boy's protests as he pulls Sammy back towards him. The little boy's limbs flail in protest as Jay turns him around, as he slides his hands under the little boy's armpits and lifts him up so the two of them can look eye-to-eye. "Your old man busted his chin on these floors. You don't want an ugly scar like his, do you?"

"No, you want to have a razor sharp mind and rugged good looks like your Uncle Jay," Jay answers on behalf of the little boy before bending his head to blow a raspberry against the patch of exposed skin peeking out between Sammy's shorts and his Sox's t-shirt. He takes the shriek of laughter as his answer; blows one last raspberry against the boy's stomach before he lets his feet slide out from under the warm covers and hit the cold, bare hardwood floors.

It takes a little bit of jostling and maneuvering to adjust the low-slung waistband of his sweatpants, to toss some of the pillows on the floor back onto the bed, and to hold onto his squirming nephew, but he somehow manages. Barely gives a thought to the t-shirt lying haphazardly on the chair in the corner as he steps out of the bedroom and into the hallway, as he begins to question his nephew on what the little boy has made for breakfast to justify waking him up.

The floorboards squeak with each step, and Jay is careful to avoid the sagging one in the middle that's needed to be replaced since the eighties. Careful, too, to avoid stepping the green, plastic Army men set up in a less than precise formation in the middle of the hallway.

He probably should have taken the time to talk Owen through some of his formations, to advise his oldest nephew on the exact way his biological father would have lined up in the Army. But there had been some daggers from his sister-in-law and some sharp words barely muttered under her breath when Owen found the old box in the closet of the bunkroom, and Jay wasn't about to willingly walk right onto that landmine. And, besides, the formations weren't wholly wrong - the calvary and the heavily artillery should be switched in order to avoid firing cannons on one's own troops - and some of the soldiers look like they'd fallen in battle to big feet and annoying little brothers more so than to the violent imagination of a nearly eight-year-old kid.

Small scale carnage compared to the state of the kitchen, Jay decides as he rounds the corner. A half-packed cooler sits on the counter surrounded by an assortment of juice boxes and lunch meats, suitcases are precariously stacked by the front door of the cabin, and dirty dishes remain spread across the wooden table. A large dollop of strawberry jam probably about an hour away from leaving its mark on his grandma's custom made table.

"Your parents are pigs," Jay informs the little boy as his gaze sweeps across the room towards the series of windows above the sink overlooking the riverfront property. Except, today, a big, black SUV blocks his view of the river and the bald eagles and the hammock perfectly positioned for optimal viewing of two of the things that draw him to this remote corner of Wisconsin. That convinced his grandfather to hire a team of mules and haul the whole cabin over five miles to sit in this spot.

Instead, it is commotion around the SUV's open doors that offer unplugged, off the grid entertainment, and Jay's lips quirk into a laugh as he watches his brother struggle to cram a large, red rolling suitcase into his tetris game of a trunk. Two tours overseas with Doctors with Borders and his brother has still never mastered the art of packing light and stacking efficiently. And Jay gives his nephew a sad shake of his head when the whole mess comes collapsing down out of the SUV and onto the dirt path in front off the cabin.

The log walls may have survived over a hundred years of Wisconsin winters, but voices still manage to float through, and Jay listens as his brother tells his wife that he should have started with the larger suitcases still the house. Watches Will clomp his way back into the cabin, and greets the opening of the squeaky screen door with raised eyebrows.

"Forgetting someone?" Jay quips with the upward jostle of his nephew that seems to startle both Sammy and Will. The oldest man in the room does a quick take; his gaze jerking from the stack of suitcases by the door to look over where Jay stands by the kitchen sink.

"Nat knew where he was," Will smoothly replies, but the shift in his gaze is less than subtle and Jay knows that he brother isn't entirely confident about what he's claiming. It had been that way most of the weekend; Will and Natalie yelling back and forth across the property asking who had Owen or Sam or Emily. Three kids - two born nearly close enough to be qualify as the Irish twins that dominated Will and Jay's neighborhood growing up - outnumbering and outmaneuvering their parents.

"She's got Emmy and Owen out in the car, if you want to say bye," Will says with a jerk of his head before struggling to lift up two of the three suitcases stacked by the door. There's a wheeze of air from Will - three kids and a job working as an attending in the ED making it difficult for him to squeeze in time at the gym - and Jay contemplates whether he should put down Sam and help him. Whether he even needs to put down the kid and, instead, can carry one of the suitcases with one hand. "Grab that cooler, will you?"

"Sure," Jay replies, but his words are muffled by the slam of the screen door behind his brother. It takes him a moment to toss the juice boxes, pre-packed sandwiches, and a couple apples off the bowl on the counter into the cooler. Gives his brother and sister-in-law time to stack at least three suitcases into the back of the SUV before he steps out onto the porch.

Jay's watch still sits on the nightstand in his bedroom - unless Emily got ahold of it again - and the clock on the stove in the kitchen stopped being accurate back in the late nineties so Jay relies on the warmth of the morning air skimming across his bare chest to help establish a rough estimate of the time. It's later than he normally sleeps, but still earlier than he thought his brother and his family would be heading out, and he can't help but inquire about the hastiness of their exit.

"Maggie called," Natalie replies as she steps forward to take her youngest son from him. And, as tight as he and Sammy are, the boy leans away from Jay and towards his mother with arms outstretched because he's yet another youngest Halstead boy who's an unapologetic Mama's boy. "Schedules got mixed up and she needs us back in the ED tonight rather than tomorrow morning."

"Hmm," Jay hums out in reply before silently holding up the cooler to enquire where he should put it.

"Just stick in the front passenger's seat," Natalie replies pointing unnecessarily over in that direction. "Owen and Emily are on that side, too."

"You need some help with that?" Jay questions when Natalie has stepped over towards the back door of the SVU leaving Jay to watch his brother struggle to cram that same red suitcase from before into the trunk.

"You put a shirt on and maybe I'll consider it," Will breathlessly quips as he finally manages to shove the heavy bag into place. "No one needs your muscles flexing in their face."

"Speak for yourself," Natalie cheekily quips from the backseat of the car where she's trying to buckle Sam into his carseat, and Jay barely manages to suppress his laughter as Will throws his wife an exasperated look. Their teasing argument about Will having enough muscles , thank you very much, grows fainter as Jay rounds the car. His gaze and, therefore, his attention settles on the Adirondack chairs out on the dock and the hammock swaying gently in the breeze down by the river drowning out the last bit of Will and Nat's bickering.

There's a couple of beer bottles still cluttered around one of the Adirondack chairs, and Jay figures that Will must not have grabbed all the ones he drowned before the two of them retired late last night. But all the toys - the ones more at home on a beach in Florida than a riverbank in Wisconsin - have been picked up, and the children's swimsuits left to air dry on the line have been pulled down. Presumably packed away in one of those suitcases his brother is audibly struggling with, Jay decides as he yanks open the passenger door and hears Will's mutterings once more.

Jay quickly drops the cooler into Natalie's seat; he'll let her figure out how best to position it amongst her stack of medicine journals and overflowing bag of diapers and wipes. And he instinctively makes sure to shut the door in order to keep the mosquitos out. To keep those bird-sized bloodsuckers from terrorizing his sister-in-law long after she's crossed over the Wisconsin border.

The baby, for her part, seems unfazed by the large welt on her right cheek where one of those insects managed to get ahold of her yesterday, and she offers her uncle a large, toothy grin when he yanks open the car door and stares down at her. When he skims his fingers against the top of her forehead under the auspicious of saying goodbye and lets the headband encircling her bald skull to hook onto his fingers and be dragged backwards. He doesn't understand why Will and Natalie keep forcing these flowery headbands on her; she doesn't look that much like Will.

"Hey, Owen," Jay calls out trying to get the seven-year-old's attention. It's hard to compete with video games, particularly if long car rides back to Chicago are the only time one gets free rein with them, but Owen manages to drag his gaze away long enough to give his uncle's fist a pound. "See you for the Cubs game next Saturday?"

Will had managed to get ahold of some tickets that a patient of his had gifted in a likely less than kosher transaction, but Jay hadn't really questioned it when Owen called asking if he wanted to come with. Played more into teasing the kid about the Halsteads being Sox fans and whether or not they can even step foot into Wrigley than worrying about whether or not his brother would be reamed out by Goodwin come Monday morning. Continues to cling to the truce that he and Will had settled upon after he and Will had caught a Blackhawks game last winter and Will refused to believe Jay hadn't scammed the center ice tickets using his badge.

"Uh huh," Owen replies ducking his gaze and, therefore, his attention back to the game console in his hand. And Jay takes the dismissal in stride; leans over Emily's carseat to bump his fist against Sam's. Offers the little boy one last round of 'Boo!' before he says goodbye and slams the car door shut, before he rounds around the car to help his brother and Natalie shove the last suitcase into the car.

"Thanks for letting us crash your weekend," Natalie says once the trunk has been slammed shut, and she steps forward to offer her brother-in-law a warm hug goodbye. "We'll see you back in Chicago."

"Did you say bye?" Jay replies with a jerk of his head towards the river as Natalie slides out of his grasp, and his sister-in-law bites her lip as she nods her head yes and then explains that the whole family did so in between bites of breakfast this morning.

"See you Saturday, man," Will interjects as he steps forward with his arm outstretched. Jay takes it, pulls his brother in for a quick hug, and then releases him when Will winces at the touch of Jay's palm against his back.

"Make sure you wear sunscreen," Jay quips with a smirk as he takes in the splotches of red across his brother's face, "and a shirt."

"Eh," Will draws out glancing up to the sun hovering overhead, "it's Chicago. It'll probably be snowing by then."

The younger of the two Halstead brothers grimaces, and the older takes that as his cue to leave. Offers his brother one last wave before rounding around the SUV, climbing into the driver's seat, turning over the ignition, and slowly driving off down the dirt road to the county roads that will, eventually, lead them back to the highway.

The car, of course, moves too quickly for Jay to catch up to it when he spots a stuffed bear left sitting on the porch swing or when he realizes the family of five drove off without taking care of their breakfast dishes. He'll give the bear a lift back to Chicago and, with a glance towards the cabin, decides to deal with the dishes later. Decides to forgo seeing if the coffee pot is empty or grabbing a t-shirt to protect him against the sun or the mosquitoes as the noise of the engine eventually fades so that all Jay can hear is the rustle of the wind through the leaves and the babble of water over rocks in the river.

His bare feet are tickled by well-trampled grass as he makes his way over to the river's edge, and he stops to wipe some of the morning dew now clinging to his feet on the leg of his sweatpants. Stops to admire the tuff of dirty blonde hair being blown side to side with the sway of the hammock before padding the rest of the way over to it.

"Pretty sure you could have hung around and gotten a goodbye hug or two," Jay announces as he reaches the hammock, as it swings right into his thigh. He watches as her eyelids flicker in acknowledgment of his voice, as her lips quirk upward into a smile at the reminder of how she needed a hug all those years ago to say a proper goodbye to him.

"Already did," Erin replies without opening her eyes. "Your nephews and I were out here fishing at daybreak. I've got the mosquito bites to prove it."

Her hand moves quickly with that comment to smack against the patch of skin left uncovered by her flannel shirt or the black orthopedic braces around her wrists, and his gaze immediately snaps to watch for a twinge of pain to flicker across her face. Nothing comes, though, and he feels the tension in his shoulder muscles immediately relax as he questions the validity of her statement in a disbelieving tone. As her eyes open and that smirk of hers that he loves so much is thrown back at him.

"Why? You angling to count them?"

"Thought I did I pretty thorough job of that last night," Jay quips, and he reaches out to stop the hammock before it can slam into his thigh once more.

"Hmm," she noncommittally hums in reply. Neither of them bothers to count, to offering a numerical warning that he's about to collapse onto the hammock beside her and risk tossing them both out onto the grass. And yet somehow they managed to do so fluidly, to do so without a wince of pain on her side as she pushes one palm down against the fabric of the hammock and curls the fingers of her other hand around the edge to brace herself. To roll towards each other so his arm ends up looped behind her back with his left hand resting on her hipbone and her head ends up resting on his chest with her left hand resting on his chest opposite her gaze.

They both know she's not wearing the falsie. The way her body curves into his and the way the pocket of her flannel shirt rests askew against chest are all telltale signs. And Jay immediately bends down to press a kiss against the top of her head, to feel the wisps of slowly growing hair graze against his lips because he knows the forging it in front of their family after forging it in front of him last night takes a lot of courage.

Or, maybe, this is just one another example of one of fucks she claims she doesn't have to give anymore. Because neither he nor their family give one about whether or not she wears it. So long as she's here and she's healthy and she's willing to stomach sticking worms on a hook and shoot them all daggers over calling her a girl about something far less gross than some of crime scenes she's been to.

"Hank and Danny get on the road okay?" He questions when her cheek nuzzles against his bare chest, and she hums out her reply once again. Eventually elaborates that Hank's already back in Chicago and plans to get Daniel back to his mom and stepdad in St. Louis by dinner time, which means that Hank either set a speed record on I-41 or it's later in the day than Jay figured.

"Thanks for letting them crash this weekend," Erin murmurs as she flexes her fingers against his chest and rolls her head up to look at him.

"They're family. They should be here," he replies catching that flicker of something - thankfulness? excitement? understanding? - in Erin's eyes before she stretches upward to press a kiss against the line of his jaw. If it's thankfulness, she doesn't need to feel that way.

Because, if the last ten years of being her partner have taught him anything, it's that Hank Voight is her father and Justin Voight's son is her nephew. If the last seven years of being her boyfriend, fiance, and then husband have taught him anything, it's that Hank Voight is his family, too. And he's the one that should feel thankful for that.

But, if it's excitement in her eyes, he's gonna have a problem with that. Not exactly the reaction one would expect to having your dad crash the celebration of your one year wedding anniversary and your six months of being in remission. The latter celebration, of course, being the reason why her dad and nephew and his brother, sister-in-law, nephews, and niece were eventually offered invitations to this weekend getaway.

"You're amazing," she replies as she settles back down against his chest, as her fingers beings to trace light circles on his chest and the sunlight pouring between the leaves of the trees bounces off the gold band on her ring finger.

"Yeah, I know," Jay responds with a cocky grin that's rewarded with the roll of her eyes and the smack of her hand against his chest. It stings for just a moment, but it's the good kind of sting. The kind that tells him that despite the chemo damaging her carpal tunnel and despite the wrist braces, she's still gonna keep him and anyone else who crosses her path in line.

"You're just wearing those so you can really kick my ass later at the gun range, aren't you?"

"Oh, yeah," Erin replies. The addition of the braces had been a breakthrough after two consecutive pisspoor showings at the gun range back in Chicago. Wearing them had put her score just barely below his; wearing them and then taking them off had given her a modicum of hope that she'd one day get back to where she was before all this. It had also given her a C-Note and bragging rights over dinner at the Purple Pig.

She still had a few months before she'd have to prove she could put in a fifteen hour day without the braces or risk riding a desk for the rest of her career, and he'd do whatever he could to help get her back out on the job. To get them both to the point where his transfer papers would be put through because Voight and Platt and the Ivory Tower weren't going to look the other way while he rode shotgun like a house husband with his actual wife.

"So kicking your ass at the gun range, trout dinner," Jay interjects after a long pause. "Anything else you want to do on our last day alone in paradise?"

She snorts at his use of the word paradise, and he can't help but smile because he knows that it's all for show. Knows that despite the massive mosquitoes and the way the smell of cheese curds lingers at the only restaurant for twenty miles, she actually does enjoy coming up here. Enjoys playing with his and her nephews in the river; enjoys sitting by the fireplace inside with him at night without the glow of a flatscreen TV or the threat of a cell phone ringing with the announcement that they've caught a case.

"Go back to bed," she answers, and his eyebrows immediately pitch upward as his lips twitch into a suggestive pitch. But she doesn't bother to look at him as she moves to swat away a mosquito buzzing near her face, as she tells him that they already did that enough last night and she didn't get to sleep in afterwards.

"Is that why you sent Sammy in to wake me up?"

"Nope," Erin replies popping the 'p' with exaggeration. "He must have a tracking device on you. Finds you all on his own."

The second part of her statement isn't a total exaggeration; Sam does seem to possess an uncanny ability to locate his uncle any time, any place. Which is fun up until he's hitting the head and the kid is standing outside the door banging on it.

"You're a good uncle," she informs him, and her voice cracks as an emotion that has no place encroaching on this weekend sneaks in. "I'm glad you have him and Owen and Emily."

The rest of her meaning - that it's been months, that Irish twins probably aren't gonna happen for them - hanging in unspoken words between them, but he refuses to let his rebuttal go unspoken or misconstrued. Lifts his right hand up so he can gently tip back her jaw and hold her gaze.

"I'm glad I've got you. Everything else is just...icing on the cake, okay? You and me? In Wisconsin? That's all I've wanted since twenty-fourteen."

"Twenty-fourteen?" She questions with a single, pitched eyebrow and a laugh. "I'm pretty sure you'd been in love with me for at least a year before you brought up Wisconsin."

"Yeah, well," he murmurs, "had to make sure you weren't just using me for my rugged good looks and razor sharp mind."

"Uh huh," she replies with a roll of her eyes before reaching out to run her thumb against the cluster of gray hairs sprouting near his ear. The ones that had appeared when she took a turn for the worst nearly a year ago to the day; the ones that had appeared when he hit forty last December. "Good thing 'cause those certainly aren't gonna be around once we retire."

Despite the dig, he can't stop his mouth from stretching out into that same grin he gave her when he first told her out this place or stop himself from leaning down and pressing a kiss against her lips. Because she's here with him; because she's looking to the future with him.

Because heart is thudding through the light fabric of her flannel and he can feel it beating against his thumb after he moves his hand upward to help steady her as she moves to straddle him. As she lifts her right leg to join her left on the other side of his body and informs him that she loves him, but there's no way she's going to risk mosquito bites in certain places because he's too old and decrepit to make it back to the cabin.

 _Fin._


End file.
